David Freed: Ranking Heroism
[David Freed is a screenwriter. His son is a California National Guard infantry lieutenant.]
Much has been made, and rightfully so, of President Obama's Medal of Honor presentation last month to Army Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta, the first living recipient of the nation's highest military decoration since the Vietnam War. But the award also raises questions. One is why so few Medals of Honor have been awarded to those who have fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, compared with the numbers issued during previous conflicts. Another is how it is decided whether a warrior's risk and sacrifice in battle merit such decorations....
U.S. military history has shown that such distinctions are easily influenced by both politics within the chain of command as well as the biases of individual commanders, who can forward or reject recommendations for medals as they see fit. Witness the fact that not a single African American soldier received the Medal of Honor in World War II, even though thousands saw combat....
Soon after I began my journalism career — not long after the end of the Vietnam War — I was assigned to cover the military because no other reporter at the newspaper in Colorado Springs, Colo., where I worked expressed interest in the beat. It was in that context that I chanced to meet McFarland, who showed up unannounced one morning in the newsroom. Bureaucrats at the Veterans Administration, he complained, were denying disability payments for the physical and emotional trauma he'd suffered in Vietnam. Could I help him cut through the red tape?...
Read entire article at LA Times
Much has been made, and rightfully so, of President Obama's Medal of Honor presentation last month to Army Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta, the first living recipient of the nation's highest military decoration since the Vietnam War. But the award also raises questions. One is why so few Medals of Honor have been awarded to those who have fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, compared with the numbers issued during previous conflicts. Another is how it is decided whether a warrior's risk and sacrifice in battle merit such decorations....
U.S. military history has shown that such distinctions are easily influenced by both politics within the chain of command as well as the biases of individual commanders, who can forward or reject recommendations for medals as they see fit. Witness the fact that not a single African American soldier received the Medal of Honor in World War II, even though thousands saw combat....
Soon after I began my journalism career — not long after the end of the Vietnam War — I was assigned to cover the military because no other reporter at the newspaper in Colorado Springs, Colo., where I worked expressed interest in the beat. It was in that context that I chanced to meet McFarland, who showed up unannounced one morning in the newsroom. Bureaucrats at the Veterans Administration, he complained, were denying disability payments for the physical and emotional trauma he'd suffered in Vietnam. Could I help him cut through the red tape?...