On 22 Apr 2004, Army Corporal Pat Tillman was killed near the village of Magarah, Afghanistan. How many soldiers have been killed in the Global War on Terrorism who you didn’t know about? Perhaps all of them- except this one?

After 9/11, NFL safety Pat Tillman traded his football uniform for desert camouflage- leaving behind a promising career and a lucrative contract to become an army soldier. Celebrity-crazed, America seized on Tillman as some sort of classic American icon- selflessly putting his country before his own talents and success. Which he was.

Several years after enlisting, Tillman was killed in Afghanistan and posthumously awarded the Silver Star, the third highest award for valor. In a media blitz, Tillman became the archetype of what America and her military stood for- sacrifice, honor, ass-kicking. Despite his overnight immortalization, it was soon revealed that Tillman had been killed by friendly fire- not by enemy fire- and a haze of uncertainty cast over the Army and the way Tillman’s death had been handled.

Conspiracy theorists surmised a cover-up, Tillman’s indignant family accused the Army of the same, and the media went on a Tillman binge, showing his official portrait and stock firefight footage ad nauseam. All of this benefited the Army, the Bush Administration, the media, (and probably the NFL), who were able to remind Americans of one thing: Pat Tillman was a hero who you should know about.

This week the Army announced that a recent report by investigating officer

Gen. William S. Wallace concluded that Lt. Gen. Philip Kensinger [senior in Tillman’s chain of command] failed to follow procedures requiring him to notify the Tillman family and top officials about the investigation into the possibility of friendly fire and then lied to two sets of investigators about when he knew that Corporal Tillman’s death was caused by shots fired by fellow Army Rangers. [-NYT]

From top to bottom, the Tillman episode stinks. It has politicians’ greasy fingerprints all over it. It has the unmistakable marks of abuse from being kicked around TV producers’ brainstorming sessions. It has the classic stamp of bureaucratic incompetence, which typically ignited into the always humiliating, never satisfying “blame game”. So who is the guiltiest of the Tillman adulterators?

It’s us. It’s our fractured society clinging to sensationalized stories of hope. It’s our segregated culture, where the all-volunteer military and its families are sequestered away on their mega-bases with their own schools and supermarkets; where the only soldier the average citizen has heard of is Pat Tillman. It’s the passive acceptance inherent in thinking that hearing a story about one famous soldier over and over again is being connected to what is happening in this war.

Further Reading: NYT Army Times DoD Press Conference Transcript ESPN Fox News Propagandists In Action