{"id":534,"date":"2007-04-26T13:02:51","date_gmt":"2007-04-26T13:02:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=534"},"modified":"2007-04-26T13:02:51","modified_gmt":"2007-04-26T13:02:51","slug":"lynch-and-tillman-and-anzac-protest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=534","title":{"rendered":"Lynch and Tillman and ANZAC protest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Briefly: a heck of a day for the narratives of war. A congressional hearing in the U.S. heard some serious mythbusting from people who should know – Jessica Lynch, she who was rescued, and Kevin Tillman, army ranger and brother of Pat, he who was killed in action<\/a>.
\nThe pathological need for the military to create Commando<\/i>-comic narratives of heroism has never been shown up so bluntly as in this hearing.
\nKevin Tillman: “Revealing that Pat’s death was a fratricide [shot by a fellow U.S. soldier] would have been yet another political disaster during a month already swollen with disasters. The facts needed to be suppressed. An alternative narrative had to be constructed, crucial evidence destroyed.”
\nJessica Lynch: “The American people are capable of determining their own ideals for heroes, and they don’t need to be told elaborate lies. I had the good fortune to come home and to tell the truth. Many soldiers, like Pat Tillman, did not have that opportunity.”
\nI want to say something more about this, about the role of war in our sense of identity, about why it is so important to us and why we are so vulnerable to mythmaking in service to it. I don’t have the time, however. I will say that those who protested at the ANZAC services yesterday do have a point – the rituals and solemnity of ANZAC day may serve to legitimise militarism and so forth.
\nBut, that said, there are ways and means to raise your concerns, and turning up the dawn parade with a bullhorn and a burning flag isn’t going to achieve anything but alienating people. As much as I have sympathy with many left-wing readings of society and culture, this kind of tone-deaf behaviour is just stupid, both tactically and strategically, and hinders the entire political left. Thanks a bunch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Briefly: a heck of a day for the narratives of war. A congressional hearing in the U.S. heard some serious mythbusting from people who should know – Jessica Lynch, she who was rescued, and Kevin Tillman, army ranger and brother of Pat, he who was killed in action. The pathological need for the military to … Continue reading Lynch and Tillman and ANZAC protest<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-8C","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}