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Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Lynch, Tillman and Truth
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This is not a liberal or conservative issue, but the anti-war Democrats in Congress are attempting to make political hay with suggestions that the brass lied about the valor under fire of Jessica Lynch in Iraq and the death of Pat Tillman in Afghanistan.
This is one of those stories where that segment of the nation that sees the war as a series of missteps, blunders and disasters, with lies as the unifying theme, will immediately conclude that moral corruption determined what the world saw in the Jessica Lynch saga or Pat Tilman’s friendly-fire death.
Was she a hero, blazing away as the bad guys closed in and took her captive? No. Was it villainous to exaggerate or glorify her actions under enemy fire — or, had the truth been immediately known, to lie? To lie, yes. To glorify? That’s less clear-cut. Certainly the country loved, and the media repeated often, “the story of the little girl Rambo from the hills who went down fighting,” as she phrased it in Congressional testimony Tuesday. Did the Bush administration deliberately and intentionally use her glorified story for propaganda purposes to build public support for an unpopular war? The antiwar left will say yes. I think it unlikely. Neither of us can know — and this Congress certainly can’t be trusted to offer balance or truth.
As for the tragic death of Tillman, was it morally wrong or politically motivated not to tell his brother, Kevin, in a nearby convoy, the suspected cause of his death? Here again, the antiwar left jumps to one conclusion. The family just wants answers — answers they certainly should have gotten earlier than three months after he was declared a hero and awarded the Silver Star. Here again, two people look at the same facts and draw different conclusions. Until the full truth was known, the suspected cause should have been kept private. Somebody obviously did make the decision to declare him a hero. Was it to build support for the war, as the antiwar left believes, or was it some lower-level decision makers who wanted to honor a high-profile life given for the country. That would be a well-meaning “lie,” and not the first one in the history of this nation’s wars, or any other country’s. It was clear from testimony Tuesday that once the President knew the circumstances of Tillman’s death were in doubt, he did not advance the “hero” angle.
The family, and the nation, should have gotten answers sooner. But the family’s motives are pure while the motives of those who would use these two stories as material for their antiwar propaganda are not.
