...regarding the miniscule number of Medals of Honor awarded in the current conflict.
Which begs the question of why so few have been awarded for valorous deeds in actual contact. And there have been a *lot* of actual contacts in which valorous deeds were performed.
Read the whole thing here.
The Pentagon's explanation is that "it's a different kind of war. The enemy uses IEDs and we use Predators."Eight years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. About 4,000 members of the U.S. military killed in action. More than 34,000 wounded. Just six considered worthy of America's highest military award for battlefield valor.
For some veterans and members of Congress, that last number doesn't add up.
Which begs the question of why so few have been awarded for valorous deeds in actual contact. And there have been a *lot* of actual contacts in which valorous deeds were performed.
Read the whole thing here.
"it's a different kind of war. The enemy uses IEDs and we use Predators."
I am irritated by that on a number of levels. Statements like this totally overlook the courage and determination of our boots on the ground. Leaving myself out of it, my oldest son is a 19A with two deployments down range and my youngest is going into his senior year at one of our local big land grant U's. He'll be wearing crossed rifles too, through a ROTC commision. (Yes, I click on the link.)
So, I guess my point is, and I am sure you will agree, this generation is no less brave or tough than their forefathers who have served our country in the past. They, meaning the powers that be, just choose not to recognize it. There sure seem to be a lot of BSM's out there without V's on 'em nowadays. Just sayin.....
a bit on the nose. I mean it almost reeks as if this war was easy for the men and women who fight it. As though predators do all the work. Sure the war is different but I don't think that makes the people who have fought it any less deserving of medals.
OTOH I'm not really into medal allocation by numbers and number comparisons from previous wars. it should be by the actual requirements of the medal.
These numbers do alert us, however, into wondering what is going on upstairs.
OTOH, I've read and heard of actions from Afghanistan and Iraq that sounded as desperate as any fighting in WW2. So I also wonder why there have been only a handful awarded in those wars, and all posthumously.
The Wikipedia article on the Medal of Honor suggests that "because of the intense partisan politics" over these two wars, recommendations for the Medal of Honor may have been vetted much more fiercely than in the past. There's an unspoken implication that some possible MoH'es have been knocked down to Navy Crosses or DSCs to avoid political arguments.
Is there any way to find out how many soldiers/sailors/airmen/marines have been recommended for the Medal of Honor as a result of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars?
Of course, this doesn't apply to media coverage of the enemy; we've been treated to daily reports of their 'bag' since 2001
No such animal.
Please tell me I'm wrong.
I think they're waiting to award it to a flag-ranked officer who's a member of the ring-knocker club.
Valor awards for survivors of firefights were sparse in IV Corps after '69. Had to maintain the fiction that there were "no US combat troops in the Mekong Delta" yanno...
SA James - maybe. Certainly possibly true on a unit-by-unit basis, but I don't think that covers it all.
John - and the shiner we took over Grenada (not that there weren't some egregrious abuses, just as there have been in this war) was mostly self-inflicted, because no one got across the point that *everybody* who hit the island and the surrounding waters qualified for the Expeditionary Medal. The initial releases and PAO responses never got around to clarifying how it all worked unitl it was too late.
They're right - for *any* war we participate in, there will be mored gongs than participants, because pretty much everybody who is in the right geographic area for sufficient time will get the campaign medal.
But explaining the diffrerence between awards and medals gets tedious. How one is for participation, and the other for doing something above and beyond just showing up and doing the usual.
I think it's politics, mostly, with a smidge of what SAJames had to say.