this pat tillman thing is yet another reminding of how out of touch i am with the things that occupy so much time in the lives of the people around me. before his death in afghanistan hit the papers last week, i had never heard of the guy. in fact, i had never heard of his football team.
his death is tragic and i feel bad for his family, but as someone who never quite got the concept of professional sports, the amount of attention his death is getting is a little puzzling to me. all of the deaths are tragic and awful (and that includes foreigner's deaths and, yes, even iraqis). i suppose it is good that mr. tillman's passing is getting treatment as more than a mere statistic. it's really what they all deserve, but do you really need to be a professional sports player for your death to mean something? personally, i think a major tragedy is that all sorts of ordinary people are getting killed in afghanistan and it is not even being reported at all. prior to tillman when was the last time you saw a newspaper article about a death in afghanistan? the u.s. military is fighting there on an almost daily basis--these guys are not even getting the crappy coverage that iraqi casualties are getting, and afghanistan is the war that has a lot more legitimacy for an awful lot of people.
on the other hand, maybe that is why deaths in iraq get more coverage. over the iraq war is a cloud of illegitimacy. the cost of that war is more of an issue with people. in afghanistan, most people see the effort to topple the taliban and stabilize the country as necessary, regardless of the costs.
