Second thoughts from the people who demand respect.

Did you know that Pat Tillman thought the Iraq war was illegal? I didn't. According to this story in the San Francisco Chronicle, Tillman supported the war in Afghanistan but opposed the war in Iraq:

Interviews also show a side of Pat Tillman not widely known — a fiercely independent thinker who enlisted, fought and died in service to his country yet was critical of President Bush and opposed the war in Iraq, where he served a tour of duty. He was an avid reader whose interests ranged from history books on World War II and Winston Churchill to works of leftist Noam Chomsky, a favorite author.

This is a Tillman that is unknown to the right-wing blogosphere, from whose radar screen Tillman disappeared after his death by friendly fire in Afghanistan — a death that the Pentagon obfuscated in an attempt to minimize the impact of the news. As the Chronicle article shows, the Tillman family is still trying to get the truth about his death out.

For me, learning of Tillman's opposition to the Iraq war reignited a low-burning flame of doubt in my mind about the war. I haven't been swayed by the "Now Blood for Oil" arguments, which are juvenile, warmed-over marxism. The sniping of tools like Michael Moore and Richard Clarke are unimpressive as well. But there are other people — serious men deploying serious arguments — whose opposition to the Iraq ware cannot be casually dismissed.

Take, for example, James Webb, a decorated Marine veteran of Vietnam who served as Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration. This is no leftist professor pontificating out of ignorance; Webb knows of war as a soldier and a civilian. And when he says things like

"Under what circumstances will the United States military withdraw from Iraq?"

That's according to James Webb, the novelist, decorated Vietnam veteran and Reagan-administration Secretary of the Navy, who spoke Wednesday night at Kansas University. Webb says he's never heard a good answer from the Bush administration to the question about troop withdrawal.

"What are the conditions?" Webb asked a crowd of more than 300 people in Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union. "If you can't answer the question, then you shouldn't have been there in the first place."

Webb goes on to say that there are

...two main problems with the war. One, he said, was that instead of focusing separately after Sept. 11 on three important issues facing the country -- terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and the Palestinian/Israeli conflict -- the Bush administration mingled them in the public mind with the war against Iraq.

Another problem, he said, was that the invasion put the military into a weaker position. Too many U.S. soldiers are either in Iraq, preparing to go there or coming back from there, he said.

"This endangers our posture elsewhere," he said.

Webb said he thought Bush was a decent human but didn't fully consider alternatives to war or look hard enough for the potential downside.

This is a mature critique framed in mature terms — not "Chimpy McHalliburton went to war to avenge the assassination attempt on his daddy" but rather a thoughtful, strategically grounded analysis.

Or how about a more philosophically based critique. Consider this from conservative icon George Will:

Will noted that he hoped the future would see a return to more "conservative prudence in foreign policy."

"We should always be skeptical about willful people exerting their will," the columnist intoned, just before lambasting the Bush administration's less than sophisticated premise that "it is cultural condescension to say a nation or its people are not ready for democracy."

This isn't Frank Rich mangling the facts from his bubble at the New York Times; this is a major conservative figure speaking at the CPAC conference just a few days ago:

"That [premise] is just WRONG," Will emphasized. "Iraq needs its own team of ‘founding fathers.'"

"The very concept of ‘nation-building' is like talking about ‘orchid-building,'" Will said, suggesting further that "America [and its democratic institutions] is difficult to replicate elsewhere."

Maybe, just maybe, we should accept the possibility that we cannot push people into democracy. Maybe, just maybe, Iraq really was an instance of overreach, a situation wherein a philosophy — that democracy is appropriate for everyone — overcame the wisdom of experience, which shows us that democracy works best in Anglo-Saxon nations. Maybe, just maybe, men who thought they were doing the best thing for their country created a war that was unnecessary to implement a philosophy that is untenable, and in so doing exposed us to even more danger than we might otherwise have experienced.

And maybe, just maybe, Pat Tillman, forgotten by those who once praised his bravery, wasn't a dumb jock at all, but indeed saw a truth that people like me have blinded themselves to. Maybe not, but the doubt will always be there.