Through Murky waters: War heroes are far from the Bat Cave
Posted on April 26, 2007
It’s a question fourth-graders have been trying unsuccessfully to answer for generations –– who’s better, Batman or Superman? Spiderman or Captain America? Which hero is more heroic?
We lose track of these heroes after a while. Our adult heroes aren’t the kind who seek out danger –– instead, we draw them from real-life people who are thrown into extraordinary situations.
On Tuesday, however, two of these heroes –– Cpl. Pat Tillman and former Pfc. Jessica Lynch –– lost their legendary status during testimony in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Tillman was a legend before he became a war hero. He gave up a multi-million dollar contract to play tight end for the Arizona Cardinals and joined the elite Army Rangers. He was killed in action in Afghanistan in April of 2004 and the government quickly reported that he had been killed leading a counter-attack during an ambush. An investigation into his death, however, has shown that he was actually killed by friendly fire during the ambush and that the government covered the incident up, posthumously awarding him the Silver Star for bravery.
Lynch was an anonymous soldier, driving a water truck during the Iraq invasion in 2003 when her convoy was ambushed and she was said to have been captured. U.S. troops rescued her from an Iraqi hospital in a raid that was depicted as dangerous and daring, but her testimony showed that instead, she had been taken to the hospital after breaking several bones and was well-cared for. CNN reports, and Lynch’s testimony confirms, that the Iraqis in the hospital at the time said there were no Iraqi soldiers present in the hospital at the time of the raid.
When their respective stories hit the press, they were immediately seized upon and sent out to a public very much in need of some heroic reinforcement in the middle of two quickly deteriorating wars.
It is clear from Tuesday’s testimony and investigations that they were manufactured into the superheroes of grade school fame. This is not to minimize the heroic aspects of what these soldiers accomplished –– they both served with distinction in extraordinary circumstances and are worthy of our respect. They were, however, victims of propaganda, along with the public.
The government’s need for misinformation reminds us of why we are so in need of heroes and why we are vulnerable to that same propaganda. We are beset by villains in all aspects of our life –– as benign as spoiled celebrities, as insidious as conniving politicians or as truly horrifying as campus killers, global warming and genocidal foreign governments. The level of evil varies, but on all the pages of any news Web site there are villains.
And so we are susceptible to the suggestion that someone, anyone, is larger-than-life. We want to think Tillman led a counterattack against Al Qaeda because once the terrorists are tamed, he might return to protect us from the monsters in our closets.
This need is natural in a society as insecure as ours, but the way in which we are manipulated as a result is horrifying. If the government has no qualms about lying to produce heroes, how deep does its villainy go? We know enough lies about Iraq to fill volumes –– everything from Lynch to Abu Ghraib to Halliburton’s no-bid contracts. The lies certainly don’t stop in Iraq.
These villains are the ones we need to clean out, and in a sense every citizen needs to become a hero and stop believing everything at first glance. It’s easy in the 24-hour news world to forget or not ask questions but we must look deeper at everything we see. Otherwise, we’ll be left with whatever beliefs they want us to have.
Perhaps there is some hope for superheroes. Lynch stood up to the government this Tuesday and threw its propaganda back in its face.
“The bottom line is that the American people are capable of determining their own ideals for heroes, and they don’t need to be told elaborate lies,” she said.
Instead of pre-packaged heroes from a propaganda office, we must demand the truth and make our own decisions. Tillman and Lynch are still heroes even if they couldn’t beat Wolverine, just like all the people who fight the long odds every day.
Alex Sirney is a senior anthropology and SMAD major.