Comments Unbecoming

by digby

I was watching the footage today of Pat Tillman’s family testifying before the Waxman committee and was reminded of this little piece of the story that I’d put out of my mind — the thoroughly insulting comments by one of Tillman’s officers who was in charge of “investigating” the circumstances surrounding his death:

Kauzlarich said he is confident the current probe will not result in criminal charges against the shooter or shooters. He said investigators would not still be examining the incident at all if it were not for Tillman’s NFL celebrity — he walked away from a multimillion-dollar contract with the Arizona Cardinals when he enlisted — and the pressure brought to bear by Tillman’s family on a number of Washington politicos.

“His parents continue to ask for it to be looked at,” Kauzlarich said. “And that is really their prerogative. And if they have the right backing, the right powerful people in our government to continue to let it happen, then that is the case.

“But there [have] been numerous unfortunate cases of fratricide, and the parents have basically said, ‘OK, it was an unfortunate accident.’ And they let it go. So this is — I don’t know, these people have a hard time letting it go. It may be because of their religious beliefs.”

In a transcript of his interview with Brig. Gen. Gary Jones during a November 2004 investigation, Kauzlarich said he’d learned Kevin Tillman, Pat’s brother and fellow Army Ranger who was a part of the battle the night Pat Tillman died, objected to the presence of a chaplain and the saying of prayers during a repatriation ceremony in Germany before his brother’s body was returned to the United States.

Kauzlarich, now a battalion commanding officer at Fort Riley in Kansas, further suggested the Tillman family’s unhappiness with the findings of past investigations might be because of the absence of a Christian faith in their lives.

In an interview with ESPN.com, Kauzlarich said: “When you die, I mean, there is supposedly a better life, right? Well, if you are an atheist and you don’t believe in anything, if you die, what is there to go to? Nothing. You are worm dirt. So for their son to die for nothing, and now he is no more — that is pretty hard to get your head around that. So I don’t know how an atheist thinks. I can only imagine that that would be pretty tough.”

Asked by ESPN.com whether the Tillmans’ religious beliefs are a factor in the ongoing investigation, Kauzlarich said, “I think so. There is not a whole lot of trust in the system or faith in the system [by the Tillmans]. So that is my personal opinion, knowing what I know.”

Asked what might finally placate the family, Kauzlarich said, “You know what? I don’t think anything will make them happy, quite honestly. I don’t know. Maybe they want to see somebody’s head on a platter. But will that really make them happy? No, because they can’t bring their son back.”

(I wonder if Kauzlarich is a believer in the death penalty?)

Apparently there are quite a few atheists in foxholes after all. On CNN they just said that there are almost 6000 members of the military who claim to be atheists or agnostics. Another 114,000 leave the question blank on their forms.

Waxman wondered if the comments might fall under the category of “comments unbecoming” and he was told that they broke no rules. Perhaps in the strictest sense they didn’t. But nobody who considers himself an honest, upright conservative Christian person should believe it was ok to lie to Tillman’s family for PR purposes and then imply that their absolutely reasonable questions were the result of being insufficiently religious. (And how insulting is that to other people who are!)

Something awful has happened to our military with this infiltration of extremist Christians in the officer ranks. And the problem isn’t that they are believers or even that some of them have simplistic views of what makes people tick. The problem with so many of these conservative Christian types in government across the board is that they are so unethical and dishonest. I don’t know if that comes from the Elmer Gantry tradition or what, but our experience with experimental theocracy has certainly shed light on this rather unexpected characteristic.

Update: Michael Froomkin tells me that Bush “hopes” that someone is held responsible.

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