Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman

On the morning of Lynch’s convoy disaster, her directing officer arrives on Tillman’s base, hysterically relaying that his convoy was almost entirely killed, with survivors pinned down in the city. When the Marines take tanks and Humvees to rescue any survivors, they get stuck in the sewage bog on the outskirts of the city. As more and more troops invade the city, communications become disjointed; radios jam with too many frantic reports, and near chaos ensues. As the U.S. soldiers enter the city, they fall under a barrage of enemy shooters perched on rooftops. Krakauer writes:

Somehow none of the Americans running the show […] had any idea that Nasiriyah was a major military hub overflowing with enemy forces. The Marines on the ground had been assured that taking the bridges would be ‘a cakewalk’—that the residents of the city were Shiite Muslims who despised Saddam and his Sunni minions, and would welcome the Americans as liberators (217-18).

No one expects a bloodbath. After the Lynch convoy displayed such timidity, the Iraqis are emboldened, seeing their foe not as the invisible force they anticipated.

During the first Gulf War, George H.W. Bush called Shia to rise up against Saddam and then failed to follow through in supporting them. Saddam retained his fleets of helicopter gunships and executed tens of thousands of Shia while the U.S. stood by. Thus, rather than being welcomed as liberators, the Marines entering Nasiriyah in 2003 are attacked. Even civilians try to prevent U.S. Marines from fighting back. The scene is horrifying, culminating in friendly fire when U.S. Air Force reinforcements fail to recognize the Marines and drop bombs on them.

March 23’s battle for Nasiriyah is panicked, confused, and incommunicative between units Alpha, Bravo and Charlie. One company’s air controller manages to call for support from the Air Force before losing his radio. With little information, the A-10 Warthog planes who respond are forced to make their own assessment of the Iraqi soldiers’ locations, mistakenly thinking some American trucks are Iraqi vehicles on the north bridge. Orders are to not fire unless the air controller has eyes on the target. Because of the radio gridlock, the location of Unit Charlie’s vehicles is not relayed to the Warthogs, and the air traffic controller gives them the go-ahead to shoot at their discretion, violating the standing order.

The first bombs from the Warthog’s powerful cannons kill at least four Marines, wounding many others. Charlie Company can’t believe they’re under friendly fire:

In desperation the Marines shot off numerous red and green star-cluster flares. William Schaefer even pulled out a three-foot-by-five-foot American flag mounted on an aluminum pole and jammed it into a smoke launcher on the turret of trac C201 to make the Air Force pilots realize they were massacring fellow Americans, but all these efforts were in vain (230).

After raining bullets and bombs on them, the Warthogs finally stop to survey the situation north of the bridge. Finding nothing there, they return and begin firing on the American trac vehicles fleeing the city with severely injured Marines. They destroy two tracs, killing 17 Marines and severely injuring 17 others. Finally, a veteran lieutenant on the ground receives a cease fire order through the radio and the Warthogs halt their attack. As the rest of the tanks make it to the bridges, the Marines finally fulfill their orders, sustaining heavy casualties, all but one of which are from friendly fire.

A week later, an investigation into the tragedy is ordered, as required by Department of Defense regulations. It concludes a year later unenthusiastically, with no interviewing of important witnesses and the disappearance of cockpit camera footage. The final report brazenly lies, stating that due to heavy enemy fire, they’re unable to determine the cause of deaths of ten Marines, confirming the other eight due to enemy fire. They conclusively determine only one Marine was hit and injured by friendly fire.

Assigning minimal blame to one’s one military and blatantly lying to sway public knowledge is a common tactic in war. However, the Bush administration’s use of deceit and sophisticated propaganda to manage public perception molds and promotes its Global War on Terror on an alarming scale. In October 2001, the Department of Defense “established the clandestine Office of Strategic Influence specifically to dupe international news organizations into running false stories that would build support for war” (237).

Two years later, the White House puts hundreds of millions into the Office of Global Communications, a military deception program to manipulate public opinion about the war using lies, run by Jim Wilkinson: “Never before in history […] had such an extensive secret network been established to shape the entire world’s perception of a war” (238). Lynch was never beaten, tortured, or raped as the media reports. She was treated well, with her captors trying to return her to an American checkpoint only to be forced to turn around when troops fire on her ambulance.

Thus, the horrific details of what led to Lynch’s real situation and the tens of Marines killed by friendly fire are effectively hushed and glorified into a win for the Americans: “A calamitous fiasco that might have undercut the public’s enthusiasm for the war was thus transformed into an opportunity to fan the flames of hatred against Saddam and his forces” (240).

The scheme works well enough to be used again, as Krakauer foreshadows the tragedy that will befall Tillman:

[T]he White House would recycle the same tactic 13 months later, almost move for move, when it was confronted with another series of potentially disastrous revelations. Just as before, a fictitious story about a valiant American soldier would be fed to the media in order to divert attention from a rash of disquieting news. On this occasion, however, the soldier cast as the hero of the fable would be a professional football player whose sense of duty had inspired him to enlist in the Rangers after 9/11 (244).

When Tillman and Kevin are sent off with the rest on their first mission, Tillman astutely observes that it seems like a massive media stunt, although he hopes they find Lynch and bring her back safely.

A week after Lynch’s rescue, the Tillman brothers fly to Baghdad, where they remain for the next five weeks. The U.S. has taken the city, removed the Saddam Hussein statue for the cameras, and allowed the city to experience unrestrained looting. Tillman’s stay there is uneventful. Other soldiers remember the brothers’ inquiring minds and tendency to provoke profound debates and conversations, indiscriminately. Tillman becomes close to a Navy SEAL with radically different politics from him—far right, whereas Tillman is more on the left—and his conversations with the SEALs are among the best he’s had.

They openly discuss their disillusionment with the war, a rare occurrence for soldiers at the time. Tillman is disappointed with his tenure in Iraq: “’Paradoxically, though, it’s obvious from his diary that some portion of his unhappiness derived from the fact that he hadn’t experienced combat yet, and concluded that he probably wouldn’t before leaving Baghdad” (250).

A few weeks later, he and Kevin receive the news that they will be going home, although Tillman reflects that it may not last with “that cowboy” at the helm (252). Seeing Marie again is a tremendous relief for both of them. They even get a two-week vacation at Lake Tahoe with old high school friends before finishing Ranger school. Meanwhile, the war in Iraq is not going well. Critics begin to compare it to Vietnam. Bin Laden praises the war as a gift from Bush, as it only fuels extremist rage and inspires more and more to join al-Qaeda.

In December 2003, Tillman gets an opportunity to leave the Army. The Seattle Seahawks’ general manager is eager to sign Tillman for the 2004 season, as are a few other big teams: “If Pat requested such a dispensation, come the following September he stood an excellent chance of exchanging his Ranger body armor for football shoulder pads, especially given Tillman’s stature.” (257). Tillman is flattered by the offers, but leaving his contract early is completely out of the question. Breaking his commitment would be compromising his integrity, despite his desire to play football again and his growing distaste for the Army.