Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Religious Prejudice Against the Tillmans

This is unbelievable. According to ESPN, Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, the guy in charge of the initial investigation into Pat Tillman's death-by-friendly-fire in Afghanistan, says that the reason Tillman's family is making such a big deal about this is that they're aren't Christians. Here's the link.

The part I'm referring to is maybe a quarter of the way down Part I of the story:
"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 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."

Tillman's mother responds:
"Well, this guy makes disparaging remarks about the fact that we're not Christians, and the reason that we can't put Pat to rest is because we're not Christians," Mary Tillman, Pat's mother, said in an interview with ESPN.com. Mary Tillman casts the family as spiritual, though she said it does not believe in many of the fundamental aspects of organized religion.

"Oh, it has nothing to do with the fact that this whole thing is shady," she said sarcastically, "But it is because we are not Christians."

Surely any comment I might add to this is already obvious.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm a humanist and a former US Army officer. I find Kauzlarich's behavior to be worthy of a court martial.

Help this happen.

Please go to a Daily Kos diary concerning Kauzlarich's comments on Tillman. There you'll find a link to the Pentagon's comments page, where you can ask them to have Kauzlarich disciplined under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Please click the link and recommend the Kos diary.

Doug Muder said...

I left a comment on the Pentagon's comments page, and I encourage others to do the same. Here's the URL

http://www.defenselink.mil/faq/comment.html

Paul said...

And just to add to the military/religious "intelligence" on this: as we all know, Christians throw parties when their loved ones die instead of having funerals - they call these "'fun'-erals" - and don't go through any grieving process because they're sure their loved one has gone to a better place.

Anonymous said...

I think it was the lies the Tillmans were objecting to.
Apparently, objecting to lies is more Christian than the Christians can stand these days.
They want us to post the ten Commandments, not live by them....

Robin Edgar said...

Of course my own ongoing protest against the anti-religious intolerance and bigotry of certain intolerant and abusive fundamentalist atheist U*Us and related injustices and abuses "has nothing to do with the fact that this whole thing is shady". . .

Robin Edgar said...

This is pretty damned shady too. . . I look forward to having a field-day with it.