Past appointment debates have taught lessons worth studying

Frontiersman Editorial Board

While it is certainly possible to pay too little respect to the dead (especially to war heroes), we wonder if it is also possible to pay too much tribute to a single heroic soldier. Is it possible to diminish the human aspects of what it means to volunteer to serve one's country, and to risk one's life in that service, by turning one soldier into something of a super hero?

Pat Tillman was a brave Army Ranger who lost his life trying to save the lives of his comrades in arms. Pat Tillman was also a young man who walked away from a lucrative professional football career to join the military following the attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon. What is it about Tillman that has captured the imagination of the American media, and thus the American people?

Perhaps it's that we are a country hungry for heroes -- starved for people who seem to live by the values we believe we once espoused. You can't find a professional athlete who hasn't been in trouble with the law, it seems. You're hard pressed to find a politician who demonstrates an unbending commitment to ethical behavior and honesty. A New York Times reporter invented the news from the comfort of his apartment. Religious leaders have been found guilty of crimes relating to sex and money. Even Martha Stewart, America's favorite homemaker, turned out to be greedy enough to break the law.

When someone like Pat Tillman comes along, we can't quite figure it out. Would any of us be able to walk away from a multi-million dollar contract and into harm's way? Knowing that we likely couldn't makes it easy to idolize such a person.

The problem with idolization, though, is that it makes Tillman seem like something more than a human being -- like something more than the other men and women serving in the armed services. Those men and women, though they likely had less material wealth to leave behind, still risk the same fate -- for the same reasons as Tillman.

Tillman deserves our gratitude. It would be a disservice to him, and to the men and women he served with, if that gratitude becomes so inflated that it obscures the sacrifices made by others, and the reasons they're making those sacrifices.

Next time you read Tillman's name on a headline, you might stop to substitute the name of one of the hundreds of other Americans who have lost their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq.