Consider a strange aspect of our wars since October 2001: they have yet to establish a bona fide American hero, a national household name. Two were actually "nominated" early by the Bush administration — Jessica Lynch, a 19-year-old private and clerk captured by the Iraqis in the early days of the American invasion and later "rescued" by Army Rangers and Navy Seals, and Pat Tillman, the former NFL safety who volunteered for service in the Army Rangers eight months after 9/11 and died under "enemy" gunfire in Afghanistan.
Both stories were later revealed to be put-up jobs, pure Bush-era propaganda and deceit. In Lynch’s case, almost every element in the instant patriotic myth about her rescue proved either phony or highly exaggerated; in Tillman’s, it turned out that he had been killed by friendly fire, but — thanks to a military cover-up (that involved General Stanley McChrystal, later to become Afghan war commander) — was still given a Silver Star and a posthumous promotion. Members of his unit were even ordered by the military to lie at his funeral, and he was made into a convenient "hero" and recruitment poster boy for the Afghan War. Both were shameful episodes, involving administration manipulation and media gullibility. Since then, as TomDispatch regular and retired lieutenant colonel William Astore points out, U.S. troops as a whole have been labeled "our heroes," but individual heroes have been in vanishingly short supply.
In fact, the only specific figures who get the heroic treatment these days are our military commanders. They tend to be written about like so many demi-gods (until they fall). General McChrystal, before his ignominious nosedive, was presented in the press (with the Tillman incident all but forgotten) as a cross between a Spartan ascetic and a strategic genius (with the brain of a military Stephen Hawking). Present war commander General David Petraeus regularly receives even more fawning media treatment and seems to be worshipped in Washington these days as if he were not only "an American hero," but a genuine military god (as well as a future presidential candidate). Yet, in the way they’ve been treated, both of these figures seem closer to celebrities than heroes in any traditional sense.
No comments:
Post a Comment