Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.
I never miss a Super Bowl, and this year’s game was close until its somewhat anti-climatic end. Of course, there’s always a winning team and a losing one, but perhaps the biggest winner remains the military-industrial complex, which is always featured and saluted in these games.
How so? The obligatory military flyover featured Navy jets flown by female pilots. Progress! The obligatory shot of an overseas (or on-the-sea) military unit featured the colorful crew of the USS Carl Vinson, an aircraft carrier. A Marine Corps color guard marched out the American flag along with the flags of each of the armed services. The announcers made a point to “honor those who fight for our nation.” All this is standard stuff, a repetitive ritual that turns the Super Bowl into Veterans Day, if only for a few minutes.
What was new about this year’s ceremony was the celebration of Pat Tillman’s life, the sole NFL player (and I think the only athlete in any of America’s “major” sports leagues) to give up his career and hefty paycheck to enlist in the U.S. military after 9/11. Yes, Pat Tillman deserves praise for that, and since the game was played in Arizona and Tillman had been with the Arizona Cardinals, honoring him was understandable. Yet, the network (in this case, Fox) quickly said he’d “lost his life in the line of duty.” No further details.
Tillman was killed in a friendly-fire incident that was covered up by the US military in a conspiracy that went at least as high as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The military told the Tillman family Pat had died heroically in combat with the enemy in Afghanistan and awarded him the Silver Star. The Tillman family eventually learned the truth, that Pat had been killed by accident in the chaos of war, a casualty of FUBAR, because troops in combat, hyped on adrenaline, confused and under stress, make deadly mistakes far more often than we’d like to admit.
What makes me sad more than angry is how Tillman’s legacy is being used to sell the military as a good and noble place, a path toward self-actualization. Tillman, a thoughtful person, a soldier who questioned the war he was in, is now being reduced to a simple heroic archetype, just another recruitment statue for the US military.
His life was more meaningful than that. His lesson more profound. His was a cautionary tale of a life of service and sacrifice in a war gone wrong; his death and the military’s lies about the same are grim lessons about the waste of war, its lack of nobility, the sheer awfulness of it all.
Tillman’s statue captures the essence of a man full of life. His death by friendly fire in a misbegotten war, made worse by the lies told to the Tillman family by the US military, reminds us that the essence of war is death.
That was obviously not the intended message of this Super Bowl tribute. That message was of military service as transformative, as full of grace, and I’m sorry but I just can’t stomach it because of what happened to Pat Tillman and how he was killed not only by friendly fire on the ground but how his life was then mutilated by those at the highest levels of the US military.
William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He taught history for fifteen years at military and civilian schools. He writes at Bracing Views.
There’s nothing new about this kind of thing. The NFL has had a contract with the Pentagon for many years. In return for money from the Pentagon, the NFL agreed to have the players on the field for the National Anthem — before this agreement, the players were in their locker rooms during the playing of the National Anthem — and agreed to allow military advertisements and the coaches often wearing military clothing during games.
Like William Astore, I totally oppose this marrying of sports with the military. The fundamental idea of playing sports is that doing so is a substitute for actually fighting. (Watch social animals, play; all they can do is fight.) I love sports and hate the military, and this disgusting military propaganda should be banned.
If you don’t like war, stop watching football. It has become sponsored and promoted by war. In fact, sports like football are part of how people are made to think in tribal terms of “us vs. them”. Then on top of that, you have the players getting serious injuries, including concussions, that can lead to suicide later in life, like my friend Tom McHale.
Couldn’t disagree more. For one thing, see my comment above about playing sports. For another, as long as players are informed about the dangers, it’s their choice whether to play. I knew that playing football and hockey, and skiing, were dangerous, but I played anyway because I loved doing so and I actually was able to expand my consciousness by doing so.
Screw this nanny-state BS. Competent adults can make their own choices about what to do or not do with their own bodies and should be allowed to do so. I’m sorry about your friend, but that freedom is far more important than trying to preserve everyone’s life infinitely. We’re all going to die very soon in geological terms, so we might as well take advantage of being alive for the short time we’re here. I’m not advocating being reckless or imprudent, but there’s nothing wrong with having some wild fun, and it can be a very good thing.
I never ever liked the fucking SUPER BOWL!!!!!! FUCK IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The MLS Cup is way better and I have been watching it since 1996. Go MLS Cup and Fuck the SUPER BOWL and Fuck the Super Bowl!!!!!!!!
Pat Tillman was fragged. G-d D*mn the MIC for using him as a stunt to get more recruits. At the Super Bowl. JFC!!!
The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2008/jun/02/ussport
Thanks for the link.
F***ING MIC…..
Tom Brady was responsible for deflate gate. If he joined the military, he’d be popular with them for committing war crimes and would be as bloodthirsty as John McCain and Tammy Duckworth.
Deflategate was utter BS. Aaron Rogers admitted that all quarterbacks do that. The league just had a problem with Brady. To be clear, I’m no Brady supporter, I think he can be a real jerk. But deflategate was totally illegitimate.