But Krakauer’s book is also an exhaustive examination of America’s political and military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. Krakauer documents an unsettling history of miscalculation and mismanagement, of tactical blunders, deliberate deceit, and stunning incompetence at the highest levels of leadership. He finds no shortage of examples of the brand of blind arrogance and bad judgment reflected in Bush’s dismissal of the warnings by intelligence officers of a possible bin Laden attack. It all makes for painful, infuriating, and required reading. Truth, we learn, is the first casualty of war, and betrayal is a rule of the game.
In July 2002, Tillman, an Arizona Cardinal strong safety, walked away from a $3.6 million contract to become a grunt in the Army. In light of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, Tillman no longer felt that his role as an athlete was important. “My voice is calling me in a different direction,’’ he wrote in his journal. “It is up to me whether or not to listen.’’
Krakauer, author of “The Perfect Storm,’’ tries too hard to win our admiration for Tillman, and, when he does, his prose becomes unnecessarily effusive. Here’s a description of Tillman that might have come from a romance novel: He has, we’re told, “chiseled features and a magnetic smile. But his eyes were his most arresting feature: greenish brown and angular, narrowly set, they were framed between high cheekbones and a dark forceful brow that emphasized their intensity.’’ And so on.
There are gratuitous passages of Tillman’s gridiron heroics complete with Brent Musberger’s play-by-play commentary. We could do with fewer reminders of the young football star’s robust masculinity or his alpha-male, superior-warrior status. And we don’t need to be told more than once that he was undersized and overachieving.
