Selling a Convenient Untruth
When the Pentagon spun false tales of heroism, it cheated all the troops
There was a time when America's wars came with a more simple, dramatic narrative, clear-cut battles, and identifiable victories. Today, war has changed. There are no front lines; convenient made-for-tv tales of stirring bravery are rare. While there is no shortage of valor among U.S. soldiers, tales of true heroes, it seems, largely go untold. For a government that must sustain public support, it makes the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan even harder to sell.
It is a painful irony that perhaps the two best-known soldiers to have served in those wars are Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman. Lynch is the blond private taken captive after her convoy took a wrong turn during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Tillman, a pro football star who left the NFL to enlist, was killed in a firefight in eastern Afghanistan in April 2004. Both were hailed by Pentagon officials and others as heroes. Both, it is now clear, were also cynically exploited as part of a calculated effort to boost support on the home front.
Marketing, of course, has always been a part of military strategy. During World War ii, the men photographed raising the flag at Iwo Jima were promoted as part of a fundraising campaign for the war. When military brass were informed that one of the soldiers had been misidentified, they ordered the survivors to keep quiet.
Spin cycle. A dramatic hearing on Capitol Hill last week helped expose the lengths to which some at the Pentagon are apparently still willing to go to craft positive, uplifting narratives. It is most likely no accident that both the Lynch and Tillman incidents occurred during periods when bad news dominated the coverage. Lynch's rescue came as the U.S. advance toward Baghdad had stalled. An anonymous leak portrayed her as fighting until the end, emptying her gun before being taken captive. Appearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last week, she testified that she was not "the little girl Rambo from the hills of West Virginia who went down fighting." In truth, she did not get off a single shot.
Tillman's death occurred during a particularly bloody month in Iraq with twin rebellions in Najaf and Fallujah. The nation was told he died under withering enemy fire. The real story came more than a month later: He was killed by friendly fire from other Army Rangers, and high-level Pentagon generals knew that a week after his death. "Revealing that Pat's death was a fratricide would have been yet another political disaster during a month already swollen with political disasters," said Kevin Tillman, Pat's brother, who served alongside him in Afghanistan. "So the facts needed to be suppressed."
The Lynch legend began with a single anonymous leak, which was not repeated by other Pentagon officials. But at subsequent media briefings, high-level officials repeatedly declined to correct any aspect of the hyped account. Phillip Knightley, a media critic and author of The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-Maker From the Crimea to Iraq, believes the Pentagon deliberately crafts such stories. "They grab whatever comes along and looks good," he says. "This one had everything—a girl, a rescue, danger."
There are also some questions surrounding the rescue itself, including an alarming allegation cited by Rep. Henry Waxman, the oversight committee's chairman, that the military might have delayed Lynch's rescue by one day to allow the team to be accompanied by a cameraman. The resultingdramatic night-scope video was released to the media and broadcast widely. "I'm still confused as to why they choose to lie and try to make me a legend," Lynch said, "when the real heroics of my fellow soldiers that day were legendary."
Tillman's case was even more egregious. Military officials went to great lengths to construct a heroic story, even as repeated inquiries found that he was killed by fellow U.S. soldiers. The Army even awarded Tillman a Silver Star for bravery under enemy fire, but the award was based entirely on phony eyewitness testimony. "By making up these false stories...you're diminishing their true heroism," Mary Tillman, Pat's mother, told the panel. "It may not be pretty, it may not be like out of a John Wayne movie, but that's not what war's all about. It's ugly. It's bloody. It's painful."
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