I’ve Been Lynched!
Jessica Lynched, that is.
Shortly after the massacre at Fort Hood, newspaper accounts were full of the heroism of Sgt. Kimberly Munley who, so they said, had taken on the alleged shooter almost single-handedly, was injured by him, but immobilized him with a shot to the torso. I reported on what looked like accurate descriptions of the incident.
The results of ballistics tests are not yet in, and they will definitively tell whose shot it was that took down Nidal Malik Hasan. But it now looks like the military was having us on…again. Read about it here (New York Times, 11/12/09).
In earlier reports, Sgt. Mark Todd was mentioned, but only as a sort of backup to Sgt. Munley. Now it’s beginning to look like it was he who shot Hasan. Todd has been interviewed and, with Munley, appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s television show to give his account of what happened. More important, his account is corroborated by that of an eye witness to the shooting.
It now seems that Todd and Munley arrived on the chaotic scene at the same time. Bystanders were pointing in the direction of the shooter and the two officers took separate routes to attempt to confront him. Todd and the witness saw Munley get shot and fall backwards. Todd then saw Hasan attempting to reload his pistol and he took the opportunity to shoot him. Hasan fell and Todd approached him and placed him in handcuffs. Whether Munley even discharged her weapon is unclear.
Ballistics tests will tell us whose slug was in Hasan’s body and that should put to rest any lingering uncertainty about who finally stopped the carnage at Ft. Hood that day.
If it turns out to have been Sgt. Todd, this case of military disinformation will still not be as egregious as it was in the Jessica Lynch case. There they concocted an entire Rambo scenario in which Lynch fearlessly fought off Iraqi attackers before succumbing to serious injuries. The truth turned out to be that she had been injured in a motor vehicle accident and had never fired her weapon. Her care at the Iraqi hospital was so good it included a nurse singing to her. Lynch herself criticized the military for its fraudulent invention of her heroism.
So it must be asked why the military is so eager to fabricate facts to fit a “women as combat heroes” tale. After all, this is the same military that, as a matter of policy, refuses to allow women in combat. It’s that policy that’s resulted in women suffering only 1.5% of American military deaths in Iraq even though 27% of U.S. military personnel there are women.
Maybe there’s a faction in the U.S. armed forces that wants women in combat and occasionally tries to make its case with a few trumped up “facts.” Or maybe there are people who want women in the military to have it both ways – to be at once shielded from most of the danger of combat and receive the accolades of heroism.
On August 16, 2009, the New York Times ran a lengthy piece about women who, in violation of Pentagon policy, saw combat duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and quoted Lt. Col. Michael Baumann to the effect that they had acqutitted themselves well. The Lynch and Munley cases force us to ask the obvious question “Was that a lie too?” As is invariably the case, false claims cast reasonable doubt on real ones. Now where have we seen that before?
As Jessica Lynch said in testimony before Congress,
[T]he American people are capable of determining their own ideals of heroes and they don’t need to be told elaborate tales.
But whatever the mysterious workings of the military’s public relations apparatus, let’s not forget Sgt. Todd. If he’s the hero of the Ft. Hood affair, as appears likely, kudos to him for his courageous and lifesaving conduct. He deserves our honor and our thanks.
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