'The truth is always more heroic than the hype'

The late journalist and social critic Gerald W. Johnson had it right when he wrote, “Heroes are created by popular demand, sometimes out of the scantiest materials, or none at all.” But there’s a corollary: Sometimes, it seems, heroes are manufactured in order to create that popular demand. Exhibit A: Tuesday’s congressional hearing on the Pentagon’s recent, disgraceful record of war-story deceit.

During the hearing, members of the military told lawmakers about how officials crafted campaigns to create heroic but largely untrue stories about the death of former NFL star Pat Tillman in Afghanistan and the capture and rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch in Iraq. The military, we now know, covered up Tillman’s “friendly fire” death in 2004 with a false tale and turned Lynch’s 2003 ordeal after an RPG hit her supply-convoy vehicle into what she now calls “the story of the little girl Rambo from the hills who went down fighting.”

Lynch (right) told legislators she’s “still confused as to why they chose to lie and tried to make me a legend when the real heroics of my fellow soldiers that day were, in fact, legendary.” But she shouldn’t be confused. A large part of conducting a war is building and maintaining public support back home for that war – or at least, preventing grim reality from eroding that support. Nothing works quite as well as the emergence of heroes – especially photogenic ones these days with compelling biographies and battlefield stories.

This is nothing new, of course. The recent film “Flags of Our Fathers,” for example, reminds us of how U.S. officials hyped and to an extent falsified the Iwo Jima flag-raising during World War II in order to shore up financial support for the war at home. You can look further back, as far back as Thermopylae at least, to find similar examples.

Often, it’s relatively harmless hyperbole that you can argue has served a greater good – such as preserving ancient Greek democracy. But sometimes, as Tuesday’s hearing reminds us, it’s a plain lie. The word “hero,” like “tragedy,” is grossly overworked anyway, and stretching it by deceit dilutes and cheapens the concept – and mocks the deeds of real heroes.

“The bottom line,” Lynch said, “is the American people are capable of determining their own ideals of heroes, and they don’t need to be told elaborate lies. ... The truth is always more heroic than the hype.” Too bad our leaders seldom seem to share that insight.