Sports Illustrated recognizes the truth

[NScott]

I experienced a Walter Cronkite moment last week that signaled to me that something is in the air about what people feel about the Iraq war. No, it didn't come from Ted Kopple's reciting of the Iraq war dead, nor the polls showing declining support for the war, nor from any of the other pundits, prognosticators, analysts and experts who fill the airwaves and pages of what we see and read. My moment came after reading Rick Reilly's column in Sports Illustrated. Yes, SI, magazine to the sports-obsessed (to which I proudly belong).

A quick history reminder: On Feb. 27 1968, Cronkite anchored a CBS special on the Vietnam War, concluding that: "To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To say that we are mired in a bloody stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory conclusion." Bill Moyers, at the time President Lyndon Johnson's press secretary, reported later that Cronkite's statement led Johnson to believe that, if he had lost Cronkite's support, he had lost the support of middle America.

In the May 3 issue of SI, Reilly, in his regular back-page column "The Life of Reilly," wrote a piece under the headline "The Hero and the Unknown Soldier." The hero in Reilly's column was Pat Tillman, the former star football player who was killed in Afghanistan. After 9/11, Tillman had given up a multimillion-dollar contract to volunteer for the Army Rangers. He was lionized throughout the country for his sacrifice.

The Unknown Soldier was Todd Bates. Bates drowned in Iraq. His death went virtually unnoticed except to his family and friends. The man who raised Bates, Charles Jones, refused to go to the funeral, refused to eat or relate to others; he died just four weeks after the funeral. "He died of a broken heart," Bates' grandmother, Shirley, who also raised him, told Reilly. "There was no reason for my boy to die. There is no reason for this war. All we have now is a Vietnam. My Toddie's life was wasted over there. All this war is a waste. Look at all these boys going home in coffins. What's the good in it?" Reilly, in barely controlled rage, concludes his piece about Tillman and Bates:


"Both did their duty for their country, but I wonder if their country did its duty for them. Tillman died in Afghanistan, a war with no end in sight and not enough troops to finish the job. Bates died in Iraq, a war that began with no just cause and continues with no just reason.
Be proud that sports produce men like this.

But I, for one, am furious that these wars keep taking them."