Honor fallen troops with nation’s full story
Their service and sacrifice deserve awe and honesty
In 2004 the U.S. Army announced Pat Tillman, the former NFL player turned Green Beret, died heroically at the hands of an enemy ambush. Only after his parents and diligent journalists poured through the evidence did we learn the corporal was killed by his own unit which mistook him for the enemy. Tillman should be honored for his devotion to our country and grave sacrifice. We honor him with honesty about his story. Failing to tell the whole truth can have devastating consequences.
Telling the stories of our fallen brothers and sisters in arms might be the greatest way to honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice. Stories keep their memories alive. While stories of heroism inspire, stories of pranks, horseplay and even embarrassing incidents give depth to their memory and are sometimes the fondest. The full human story of our departed friends gives greater meaning to their sacrifice. The full story matters — with all the blunders, jokes and triumphs. On Memorial Day 2021 and the days to come, let us work to tell the whole story.
The Army could not bear to tell the whole truth about Tillman’s death, so they made up a new story and devastated his family further while damaging the U.S. military’s reputation. They made this calculation to control the narrative of the war. They destroyed valuable credibility instead.
During World War II, narratives were easier to control.
Most Americans have not heard how five children were killed in Oregon in 1945 from a bomb attached to a balloon launched into the jet stream from mainland Japan. The story did not get
broad attention because our federal government was able to control the narrative by rushing into towns where balloons landed and shut down the story to prevent panic. They were able to control the narrative and thereby control behavior.
The ability to control the narrative from the top down deteriorated over the following decades as technology advances and freedom of the press combined forces. News cameras in Vietnam stripped the White
House’s ability to paint a rosier picture than what citizens could now see with their own eyes. In the 21st century everyone on the battlefield can broadcast a war to the world in real time. Sometimes cellphones broadcast bravery, sometimes they capture things like the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. Narrative today is driven by bottom-up stories.
Bottom-up stories are how we all witnessed the horrific killing of George Floyd. Bottom-up stories are how we have the
heroic image of a bloody 1st Sgt. Brad Kasal being helped out of the “Hell House” in Iraq burned into our national mind’s eye. Given the few thousand years humans have been flying national flags, bottom-up narrative control is a relatively new phenomenon for nations and governments to deal with. Citizens and institutions alike are still figuring it out.
Individual stories and narratives are so important because they make up the fabric of our overarching national narrative, which is increasingly up for debate today. Efforts like the 1619 Project push a narrative of national guilt centered around critical race theory. Former President Donald Trump’s 1776 commission and the recent 1836 Project legislation up for consideration here in Texas are direct reactions to the 1619 Project and the Black Lives Matter movement. The projects and commissions are destined to fail because they are only partial stories and because top-down narrative control is a relic of the past.
The national narrative debate will be won from the bottom-up, but the question of what the story evolves to be remains unanswered. Will it be a story of guilt for our past sins? Will it be a story which declares all our past wrongs are now right?
Ours should be a story of honesty about our failures and pride in our triumphs. We should be proud Americans, not because we are perfect, but because we aspire to march with clear eyes and full hearts ever closer to securing the self-evident truths we declared in 1776.
If we are to honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice, we will tell their full story and we will tell the full story of our nation. We will tell these stories with reverence and with honesty. Tillman is a hero, not because of how he died, but because he cared so much for our country that he deployed twice in our wars and gave his life in service.
More than 7,000 Americans died over the past 20 years in the War on Terror. In our youthful 244 years of existence, over 1.3 million Americans died in our wars, each with their own story. Their full stories, their service, and their sacrifice deserve both awe honesty.