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Where Men Win Glory

the Odyssey of Pat Tillman
Feb 27, 2015MICHAEL TAGGART MALONEY rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
WHERE MEN WIN GLORY is not a bad book, but it is definitely not a Krakauer blockbuster like INTO THE WILD and INTO THIN AIR. Its flaw is that it is several different narratives that never get knit together. You have the back story of football star and thinking man Pat Tillman, which is compelling; then you have an in-depth treatment of the big fratricidal incident in Nasiriyah during the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 the year prior to Tillman's death; then you have the in-depth description of the Army Ranger friendly-fire incident that killed Tillman in Afghanistan; then you have an account of the Army's and the Bush administration's cover-up of the Tillman fratricide and the efforts of Tillman's mother Dannie to have the government investigate itself; and finally you have krakauer's concluding comments on the doomed nature of the U.S./NATO presence in Afghanistan. The best part of the book is reading about Pat Tillman. He was a neat guy, a real person, an honest man. Krakauer is particularly effective when he describes Tillman's rapid disillusionment with the military during basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia. As Tillman wrote in his journal: "I am not a negative man, I do not want to report bad, I want to rise above and bring everyone with me. However, this fucking place blows . . . period." Krakauer hits the right note at the end. Afghanistan is not a conflict that the United States will ever win. Tillman's head was blown off in Khost Province by a brother Ranger operating a squad automatic weapon. Close by, over the Zero Line, a.k.a., Durand Line, is North Waziristan, home to Bin Laden crony and ISI asset Jalaluddin Haqqani, head of the Haqqani network. The United States is fighting a creation of its allies, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. It is all a crazy murderous game that mangles and discards the lives of young people. I doubt the ongoing Pakistani campaign in North Waziristan is anything more than a perfunctory performance of political theater.