Very said news from Afghanistani

[IlliniRacer]

Ex-NFL player Tillman killed in Afghanistan (http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=1788232)

Walked away from a $3 million contract to serve. :(

[cartgal]

How tragic -- and no more so than any other death due to combat there or elsewhere. And what an honorable person. I'd want a football team or a platoon or an office full of people with the heart and sense of responsibility he demonstrated. I hope his family is proud of him even in the midst of their grief. A tremendous role model. Rest in peace.

[devilmaster]

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?"
And I said, "Here am I. Send me!"
Isaiah 6:8

[Brickman]

Not your typical NFL player... not your typical American.

[rabbit]

"But there is in Pat Tillman's example, in his unexpected choice of duty to his country over the riches and other comforts of celebrity, and in his humility, such an inspiration to all of us to reclaim the essential public-spiritedness of Americans that many of us, in low moments, had worried was no longer our common distinguishing trait."

-- Sen. John McCain

[RacinM3]

He was a good friend of my business partner. He was very depressed when he got to the office this morning. It made me realize that the longer this goes on, whether it's Afghanistan, Iraq, or some person stateside killed in a military accident, sooner or later all of us will be impacted.

I appreciate all the men and women serving.

[Ziggy]

With the case tied up in Supreme Court over a spoiled athlete winning the right to get into the draft

and now this.........

Mr Tillman was indeed a hero, and in a time when the measuring stick for hero's is indeed skewed.

Rest in Peace

[datachicane]

A terrible waste. But that he was the only one...



In modern war you will die like a dog for no good reason.
--Ernest Hemingway

[rabbit]

I think hunting down Osama bin Laden is a damn good cause.


In modern war you will die like a dog for no good reason.
--Ernest Hemingway Yeah, suicide, now there's a noble way to die. :rolleyes:

[Hot Rod Otis]

A terrible waste. But that he was the only one...



In modern war you will die like a dog for no good reason.
--Ernest Hemingway

Real f****ing classy. :mad:

[jcollins28]

http://www.petitiononline.com/PAT_NFL/petition-sign.html?

[Railbird]

Gods speed Pat Tillman

as a life long fan of the migratory birds (Chicago, St Louis, Arizona, Phoenix and probably soon to be Mexico City Cardinals) I followed Pat's maturation into a force to be reckoned with.

When he walked away from the big paycheck to do what his heart told him to do he left me shaking my head in question and admiration.

[Jervis Tetch 1]

I remember him at Arizona State and when he decided to leave the Cardinals after 9-11.

I'm truly saddened.

Now he was a true hero.

[nrc]

Please don't turn this political. You should be able to honor the man for serving his country whether or not you agree with the mission our country sent him out on.

[redmist]

With the case tied up in Supreme Court over a spoiled athlete winning the right to get into the draft

and now this.........

Mr Tillman was indeed a hero, and in a time when the measuring stick for hero's is indeed skewed.

Rest in Peace
not to mention the probable #1 pick in this years nfl draft crying about which team he doesn't want to play for.

[DaveL]

Pat Tillman is a patriot and a hero, period. The world is a lesser place without him in it.

[Ankf00]

not to mention the probable #1 pick in this years nfl draft crying about which team he doesn't want to play for.
funny how no one thinks a thing of john elway for holding out but suddenly all the cable news guys are calling eli a ***** :rolleyes:

as for tillman's death, no more tragic than anyone else's, but ignoring fortunes for principle, that makes a man imo.

[FTG]

Just the other day, I read a couple of Hemingway's Spanish Civil War stories.

The dude knew a few things about war. (Even if he was an alcoholic, who killed himself.) No reason you can't do all three.

I feel bad when anyone is killed in war. I think Hemingway did too.

I wish more people did.

[nrc]

I wish more people did.

Who doesn't? :confused:

[Ankf00]

Just the other day, I read a couple of Hemingway's Spanish Civil War stories.

The dude knew a few things about war. (Even if he was an alcoholic, who killed himself.) No reason you can't do all three.

I feel bad when anyone is killed in war. I think Hemingway did too.

I wish more people did.
Hemingway, Orwell, Auden, Owen... quite a generation of authors

[FTG]

Who doesn't? :confused:

Who does?

[nrc]

Who does?

Are you implying that you're the only person who feels bad when someone dies in a war?

[Ziggy]

and the message board saga continues

[RaceGrrl]

http://www.latimes.com/includes/ramirez/today_ramirez_20040424.gif

[Napoleon]

From yesterdays Washington Post, a very good column.



Life Is No Life to Him That Dares Not Die


By Sally Jenkins

Saturday, April 24, 2004; Page D01


Pat Tillman would probably want to be commemorated by nothing more than the simple hush we devote to other lost infantrymen we didn't know. He no doubt would have preferred that we dwell instead on the photographs of those caskets draped in flags coming home from Iraq. He would surely disapprove of so much attention diverted to a single serviceman, simply because he played football. In the two years since he abandoned his NFL career and enlisted to become an Army Ranger, he steadfastly declined interviews and refused to use his military experience for renown or profit.

Instead, he embodied the words of poet George L. Skypeck: "I was that which others cared not to be. I went where others feared to go and did what others failed to do. I asked nothing from those that gave nothing . . . "

War poets may be the only voices capable of speaking to the loss of Tillman, who gave everything. "Tilly" to his friends, he was killed in action in Afghanistan on Thursday because, as he put it, his life as a football player was privileged and he needed, he said, to "pay something back." While he wished to be just another soldier, he never was, because he made the war personal to us. For better or worse we imagine an intimacy with our hero-athletes. Sacrifice now has a face, and a voice.

Tillman had luxuriant surfer hair, and he said "dude" a lot, and he liked to climb to the top of stadium light towers, where he would sit and think deeply. So now we feel the war, and it's high time, in this leisurely part of the newspaper devoted to games. Why did it take the death of Tillman for meanings to be restored, for play to become just play again, and war a soul-torturing affair, instead of bad metaphor?

At Arizona State he was known as a quirky-bright guy and a fervent overachiever, who sat in the front of every class in a T-shirt and flip-flops with his hair draped over his shoulder, taking copious notes. He was one of the last players given a scholarship, too small to be a linebacker at 5 feet 11, but he became the Pac-10 defensive player of the year. He was a 19-year-old when he told a young reporter for a local paper that he was going to do big things beyond the field. "Dude," he said to Scott Bordow, "I'm going to make a million dollars by the time I'm 30, and it's not going to be in football." He graduated *** laude in three and a half years.

"Courage was mine, and I had mystery; Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery."

-- Wilfred Owen

He was drafted in the lowly seventh round in 1998 by the Arizona Cardinals, and converted to safety. Too slow to be a safety, he nevertheless set a club record with 224 tackles in 2000. In the offseason, he ran marathons, and competed in a triathlon, and it became a familiar sight in the club's parking lot to see Tilly ride his bike to work and park it next to the luxury SUVs of his teammates.

Then one morning at a coffee shop after Sept. 11, he told his defensive coordinator Larry Marmie, "You better draft a safety," because he was enlisting. Tillman was no toy soldier, no adventuring Rambo. At Fort Benning, Tillman and his brother, Kevin, graduated from basic training with distinction, and Tillman was chosen to carry his unit's colors. This is what it means to be a Ranger, a member of the Army's finest light infantry unit: two-thirds of all candidates fail or drop out. They learn to parachute at night under fire, to sleep standing up, to subsist for days in jungles or on mountainsides with no food. In 1995, five candidates died of hypothermia while training in a Georgia swamp. A prospective Ranger's ordinary day lasts 19.6 hours.

"As a company commander in combat . . . crawling around in the mud with an enemy machine gun hammering over my head . . . the crotch ripped out of my uniform . . . constipated . . . hungry . . . huge bug bites under my eyes . . . exhausted with days of intermittent sleep . . . I could always comfort myself by saying . . . 'it could be worse . . . I could be back in Ranger School,' '' Gen. Barry McCaffrey once reminisced.

"Here dead we lie because we did not choose to live and shame the land from which we sprung. Life to be sure, is nothing much to lose; But young men think it is, and we were young."

-- A.E. Housman

Tillman's gallant death raises complicated questions about the role of athletes in society, about why we so overpraise some people and so undervalue others. Was Tillman a more valuable person because he once played in the NFL?

Former teammate Pete Kendall, the Cardinals' starting center, said, "The loss of Pat brings it home. Every day there are countless families having to get the same news." Some 117 U.S. soldiers have died -- 70 in combat -- during Operation Enduring Freedom, which began in Afghanistan in late 2001.

In March 2003, Staff Sgt. Jacob Frazier, serving with the 169th Air Support Operations Squadron, died when four gunmen on motorcycles ambushed the reconnaissance unit with which he was traveling. In April 2002, Jerod Dennis, a member of the 3rd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment out of Fort Bragg, N.C., was on patrol with other soldiers when they drove into an ambush by rebel fighters.

"A lot of time in football, the analogies with war are thrown about," said Kendall. "They talk about soldiering on and that sort of thing. Today you see how hollow that is."

Tillman would no doubt suggest that we grieve equally for Staff Sgt. James D. Mowris. And Staff Sgt. James D. Scott. And Sgt. Danton K Seitsinger. And Sgt. Benjamin L. Gilman. And Sgt. Nicholes D. Golding. And Staff Sgt. Anthony S. Lagman. And Sgt. Michael J. Esposito, Jr. All killed.

He would probably wish us to realize that outfits continue to rotate in and out of Afghanistan, and the war is not over there. The focus, understandably and for good reason, has been on Iraq. But there has been a real war going on in Afghanistan also, and while it might be "small" on the current relative scale, down at the squad, platoon, and company and battalion level it all tends to look pretty much the same, and the Pat Tillmans of the world are out there at the tip of the spear.

As perfect strangers we can only guess why a star athlete would give up a $3.9 million NFL contract for the infantry life. But perhaps it was a simple decision. Perhaps Tillman felt what Wilfred Owen did in 1917, when he returned to the war after being wounded in heavy fighting on the Somme.

"My nerves are in perfect order," Owen wrote his mother. "I came out again in order to help these boys; directly, by leading them as well as an officer can; indirectly, by watching their sufferings that I may speak of them as well as a pleader can."

A friend of Tillman's from the Arizona State athletic department spoke with him on April 1, shortly before he left Fort Lewis, Wash., for Afghanistan. Tillman did what guys operating with Special Forces do, he issued only the most laconic description of how and what he was doing. He had been to the Middle East for several months once already, and now he was about to ship out again. "We're pretty busy around here right now," he said.

What Tillman's friends did learn was that Tillman no longer considered himself a football player. He was thinking seriously of reenlisting and of making the military his career. He aspired to be an officer. He wanted, he said, to lead Rangers.

"I, too, have dropped off fear -- Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon, And sailed my spirit surging, light and clear. Past the entanglement where hopes lay strewn."

-- Wilfred Owen, killed in action, 1918, five days before the armistice.





© 2004 The Washington Post Company

[datachicane]

Real f****ing classy. :mad:

You misunderstand me.
War is a waste, period.
No political commentary intended.
:(

[oddlycalm]

Our thoughts are with the Tillman clan. His decision to serve was a selfless one, and reflects the true measure of the man.


In modern war you will die like a dog for no good reason.--Ernest Hemingway

Ironic, as Afghanistan is perhaps the least "modern" of any US conflict since the 19th century history, and it is one largely confined to small unit actions undertaken to run to ground people that have offered the most compelling of reasons to do so.

oc

[dando]

BTW, I heard on ESPN Radio that the parasites on eBay are making a buck off Tillman memorabilia and kits to customize current Cardinals jerseys w/Tillman's name and number. :mad: How pathetic. Worse than ambulance chasers, IMHO. I remember when these idiots did the same with mission patches, etc. after the Columbia disaster. :(

On the good side, Donruss gave back to the Tillman family a game worn Tillman jersey that was to be cut up and included with special cards. :thumbup:

-Kevin

[dando]

This column should make anyone (American or not) sick:

Pat Tillman is not a hero: He got what was coming to him (http://media.dailycollegian.com/pages/tillman_lobandwidth.html)


Tillman, probably acting out his nationalist-patriotic fantasies forged in years of exposure to Clint Eastwood and Rambo movies, decided to insert himself into a conflict he didn't need to insert himself into. It wasn't like he was defending the East coast from an invasion of a foreign power. THAT would have been heroic and laudable. What he did was make himself useful to a foreign invading army, and he paid for it. It's hard to say I have any sympathy for his death because I don't feel like his "service" was necessary. He wasn't defending me, nor was he defending the Afghani people. He was acting out his macho, patriotic crap and I guess someone with a bigger gun did him in.

:mad:

I'll be nice and suggest that one's perspective is different having not been around during the Cold War era. Thank you for exercising your right to free speech, feel free to excercise your right to leave @ anytime.

UofMass Prez response:

UMass president rips student column on Tillman (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/football/nfl/04/29/bc.fbn.umass.tillmanfla.ap/index.html?cnn=yes)


UMass president Jack Wilson issued a statement saying Rene Gonzalez' comments in The Daily Collegian "are a disgusting, arrogant and intellectually immature attack on a human being who died in service to his country."

-Kevin

[rabbit]

This column should make anyone (American or not) sick:The author:
http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~jbcp/rene.html
http://www.fortunecity.com/underworld/stunt/187/index.html

Email me at: rene@student.umass.edu or renegonzalez7@hotmail.com

[dando]

The author:
http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~jbcp/rene.html
http://www.fortunecity.com/underworld/stunt/187/index.html
Thx, Rabbit. I tried looking for the author's contact info, but the Daily Collegian site is hosed with traffic.

-Kevin

[Ankf00]

the kid's not worth the attention or trouble of writing a steamed email to

[Robstar]

the kid's not worth the attention or trouble of writing a steamed email to

Exactly

[chop456]

He needs some cosmetic dentistry. Maybe someone will be kind enough to provide him with some modifications the old-fashioned way.

[KaBoom21]

Back pedaling in true Dixie-Chick fashion:

Gonzalez says column 'not worth publishing'

Associated Press
AMHERST, Mass. -- A University of Massachusetts at Amherst graduate student has apologized to Pat Tillman's family.


Rene Gonzalez wrote a column for the campus paper saying the football player-turned-soldier who died in combat in Afghanistan wasn't a hero -- but rather a "G.I. Joe guy who got what was coming to him."


Gonzalez did not respond to telephone and e-mail messages left Thursday by The Associated Press, but in an e-mail to Boston's WBZ-TV, he apologized to the Tillman family "for all the pain that my article has brought them."


Gonzalez said he was trying to convey that Tillman's celebrity came into play when the former Arizona Cardinals player was labeled a hero.


"I felt that his celebrity had been a factor in American society calling him a 'hero,' and I felt American society had arrived at that conclusion without much thinking, but rather as some sort of patriotic 'knee-jerk' into hero worship," he wrote. "That was my point. I did it [admittedly] in such an insensitive way, that the article was not worth publishing."


UMass president Jack Wilson issued a statement saying the comments in The Daily Collegian on Wednesday were "a disgusting, arrogant and intellectually immature attack on a human being who died in service to his country."


The newspaper's editorial board ran a letter to readers in Thursday's edition saying Gonzalez's views do not reflect The Collegian's opinion.