“I’m Pat fucking Tillman!” – April 22, 2004
I recently watched “The Tillman Story,” an absorbing 2010 documentary by filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev. It explores the life and mainly the death of Tillman, a NFL star defensive back who was motivated by the September 11th terrorist attacks to leave professional football and his seven-figure contract in order to join the U.S. Army.
Tillman was killed in action by friendly fire while serving in Afghanistan in April 22, 2004. As one official notes in the movie, “[in the Army] first reports are incorrect” and in this case they were. The Army described the highest profile casualty of the Iraq or Afghanistan wars as resulting from Tillman’s heroism protecting fellow soldiers from Taliban fighters. For over a month, the cause of Tillman’s death was covered up. Meanwhile, countless tributes to his tremendous sacrifice proceeded and–as the film persuasively asserts–were used as propaganda tools that distorted his patriotism and dishonored his sacrifice.
The film moves beyond the interesting but common story of how the truth of war is so often twisted (such as in the 2003 case of Jessica Lynch) to serve the cause of those prosecuting war. It brings the viewer into close contact with the Tillman family–Pat’s mother, father, wife, and two younger brothers, one of whom enlisted and served with him in the Army. Esquire’s Mark Warren describes the Tillmans as, “[extraordinarily determined]…a foulmouthed and eclectic bunch of square-jawed hippies from San Jose, California…A more compliant family, more easily bamboozled by the institutions of American power at the highest levels, might have meekly, or readily, accepted the government’s vigorous effort to turn Pat Tillman into a…fantasy that it could then exploit relentlessly…”
It was this determination that led to the exposure of what really happened to Pat Tillman in his final moments of life in Afghanistan when he repeatedly implored those he knew were fellow American soldiers shooting at him to cease fire by shouting, “I’m Pat fucking Tillman!” For this profanity, and many other utterances of the word “fuck” (including one anecdote that serves as the film’s only laugh), “The Tillman Story” received an appallingly undeserved R rating, despite its near total lack of violence, sex, or other potentially objectionable material. This is a film that American middle school and high school students should not only be allowed to see; they should be encouraged to see it.
