Army Says Pat Tillman Is Worm Dirt - Deal With It, Grieving Parents! | Unscrewing The Inscrutable:
American hero Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. You'd think that the Army would want to find out exactly what happened, and discipline those who were responsible.
Well, you'd be wrong.
Instead, Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich has decided to blame everything on the Tillman family's atheism instead.
[link] Kauzlarich said he is confident the current probe will not result in criminal charges against the shooter or shooters. He said investigators would not still be examining the incident at all if it were not for Tillman's NFL celebrity — he walked away from a multimillion-dollar contract with the Arizona Cardinals when he enlisted — and the pressure brought to bear by Tillman's family on a number of Washington politicos.
"His parents continue to ask for it to be looked at," Kauzlarich said. "And that is really their prerogative. And if they have the right backing, the right powerful people in our government to continue to let it happen, then that is the case.
"But there [have] been numerous unfortunate cases of fratricide, and the parents have basically said, 'OK, it was an unfortunate accident.' And they let it go. So this is — I don't know, these people have a hard time letting it go. It may be because of their religious beliefs."
In a transcript of his interview with Brig. Gen. Gary Jones during a November 2004 investigation, Kauzlarich said he'd learned Kevin Tillman, Pat's brother and fellow Army Ranger who was a part of the battle the night Pat Tillman died, objected to the presence of a chaplain and the saying of prayers during a repatriation ceremony in Germany before his brother's body was returned to the United States.
Kauzlarich, now a battalion commanding officer at Fort Riley in Kansas, further suggested the Tillman family's unhappiness with the findings of past investigations might be because of the absence of a Christian faith in their lives.
In an interview with ESPN.com, Kauzlarich said: "When you die, I mean, there is supposedly a better life, right? Well, if you are an atheist and you don't believe in anything, if you die, what is there to go to? Nothing. You are worm dirt. So for their son to die for nothing, and now he is no more — that is pretty hard to get your head around that. So I don't know how an atheist thinks. I can only imagine that that would be pretty tough."
Asked by ESPN.com whether the Tillmans' religious beliefs are a factor in the ongoing investigation, Kauzlarich said, "I think so. There is not a whole lot of trust in the system or faith in the system [by the Tillmans]. So that is my personal opinion, knowing what I know."
Asked what might finally placate the family, Kauzlarich said, "You know what? I don't think anything will make them happy, quite honestly. I don't know. Maybe they want to see somebody's head on a platter. But will that really make them happy? No, because they can't bring their son back."
I think I'm going to vomit.
you're not alone...
I as a Christian instead dispise the willingness of Kauzlarich to desire to just wash the incident under the rug, implying that a Christian family would be more willing to think "he's in a better place". Such soft-hearted sentiments may have been fine for sweeping our mortality under the rug centuries ago, but in the 21st century, they don't cut it anymore.
Just because we are not called upon to judge each other (even as we do, constantly), we ARE expected, to live in this society, to maintain a level of accountability. If it takes someone "famous" to get the administration and the military to stop treating incidents like this as "accidents" to be swept under the rug, then so be it, and whether or not they are atheist or Christian or even Muslim, it shouldn't and doesn't matter.
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