Category: Paint me surprised by this
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
On Tuesday, President Obama awarded 24 soldiers with the Medal of Honor who had been overlooked, or rather, discriminated against, for heroic actions they took in wars going back to Vietnam, Korea, and World War II.
That these men were not given the honor they deserved when they should have is a terrible injustice.
But a new form of discrimination in awarding medals appears to be forming.
The Global War on Terror encompassing both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is the longest engagement in our nation’s history, and yet it has yielded the lowest number of Medal of Honor awards of all wars. And while racial discrimination is being fixed when it comes to awarding medals, “discrimination by rank” seems to have taken its place, according to a number of military veterans I spoke with.
“Awards are watered down and often handed out based on rank,” said Matthew Bell, a former Marine staff sergeant who served in Iraq. Officers and senior enlisted tend to get higher awards, he said, while a “junior Marine who exposes himself to incoming fire while killing 20 insurgents with an E-tool gets a Certificate of Commendation.”
While an exaggeration, this is sadly not far from what others told me.
“One of my fellow team leaders shot and killed the driver of a dump truck full of explosives driving into our patrol base, ultimately saving the lives of my entire platoon,” said Christopher Brown, a former Marine corporal who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. “The [suicide vehicle bomb] still detonated, but rather than detonating on impact with the house it came to a rolling stop in the driveway.”
The bomb wounded twenty but no Marines were killed. “The lance corporal who saved our lives received no award, while our Lieutenant who was calling in to higher on a disconnected radio handset received a Bronze Star.”
Now of course, the nature of warfare is certainly changing. There are less battlefield deaths, better gear to protect soldiers, and improved tactics in place. But there definitely “is a military awards problem,” according to one Army captain I spoke with.
When asked if there were “quotas” in place for military awards — or caps for certain ranks to receive specific decorations — the captain couldn’t say.
“Quotas are highly illegal, and even harder to prove,” the captain told me. “You have to have an email from a commander stating he is using a quota system.”
“My unit(RCT-1 Security Platoon ’04) were/was all put up for [Navy Achievement Medals] for running 112 missions in a month,” said Joe Schacht, a Marine veteran of Iraq. “Not a big deal, but it was downgraded to a [Certificate of Commendation] because they ‘couldn’t justify giving 30 Marines in the same platoon a NAM.’ Our lieutenant and platoon sergeant, of course, got their Bronze Star.”
This uneven distribution of awards is a common complaint, as an article in Stars and Stripes from June 2000 shows:
A recent review by the Stars and Stripes of the way the Bronze Star was awarded to U.S. personnel involved in the airstrikes on Yugoslavia found that the Air Force awarded 185 of the medals, the vast majority going to officers and top commanders. Only 25 enlisted Air Force troops got the nod. Of all the medals awarded, only one in 10 actually was in the combat zone.
…
One lieutenant colonel received the medal, for example, “for responding to supply requests at a moment’s notice” at Aviano Air Base in Italy. Another senior officer got a Bronze Star for presenting his “bed-down briefing” to top brass, such as then-NATO commander Gen. Wesley K. Clark, on where troops and aircraft were being positioned at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Others got it for helping to plan strike missions.
And what of the Medal of Honor? The nation’s highest honor should be reserved for only the most incredible battlefield heroics, but the difference from previous wars is rather striking when looked at side-by-side with wars of the past decade.
Just look at this chart, which shows the number of Medal of Honors awarded (prior to the 24 Tuesday), via Leo Shane of Military Times:
Leo Shane/Twitter
Of the 249 awarded for action in Vietnam, three were earned for actions in a city known as Huế. The besieged city saw some of the bloodiest and worst fighting of the war, and while there are distinctions, there was a similar battle during the Iraq War in Fallujah.
The difference: Not a single Medal of Honor to emerge from the 2004 battle there.
It’s certainly not due to lack of heroics. One of the most famous and controversial cases is that of Sgt. Rafael Peralta, who was submitted for the Medal of Honor after jumping on a grenade inside a house, saving the lives of four Marines. He was instead awarded the Navy Cross.
And then there is the less-known case of Lance Cpl. Christopher Adlesberger, who upon entering an insurgent-infested house as a private first class, pushed forward despite the death of his point man and the wounding of two others.
Adlesberger, wounded in the face by grenade fragments, then single handedly cleared a stairway and a rooftop, throwing grenades and shooting at insurgents while under blistering fire. “Adlesberger was killing insurgents so they couldn’t make it up the roof,” said platoon corpsman Alonso Rogero, in his written statement of events. “The insurgents tried to run up the ladder well, but PFC Adlesberger kept shooting them and throwing grenades on top of them.”
He died a month after his heroics in that Fallujah house, but Adlesberger was posthumously recommended for the Medal of Honor. The award recommendation from 3rd Battalion 5th Marines originated with 1st Lt. Dong Yi and moved up the chain of command, with concurrence from Adlesberger’s battalion commander, regimental commander, and division commander.
Two years later, when his recommendation reached the MEF Commander, Lt. Gen. John Sattler, it was downgraded to the Navy Cross, the nation’s second highest award. The document examined by Business Insider did not include any comments or reasoning as to why.
(Sattler did not respond to multiple emails from Business Insider).
“The simple fact is, nobody even knew how to write up any of that stuff, and it never crossed anybody’s mind,” Sgt. Maj. Justin LeHew told Marine Corps Times Dan Lamothe last November. “ … If I’m writing, and I look back at what I wrote in my hip-pocket notebook in the middle of combat on some of these guys, my guys are wearing [Navy and Marine Corps Commendation medals with “V”] for what some guys got Silver Stars for that were out there.”
——————————————————————————— So paint me shocked by this! The awarding of medals has always been an act of luck, favoritism and rank in my brief experience in the Army. I am also sure that it is true of every other Army since day one. Grumpy
Philadelphia gas station owner Neil Patel hired security guards with AR-15s to deal with all the “nonsense, drug trafficking, hanging around, [and] gangs” endangering his employees.
Patel, who has a Karco gas station, hired “Pennsylvania S.I.T.E Agents clad with Kevlar vest and AR-15s or shotguns” to keep his employees safe, FOX 29 reports.
“They are forcing us to hire the security, high-level security, state level. We are tired of this nonsense: robbery, drug trafficking, hanging around, gangs,” Patel said.
The guards he hired wear Kevlar vests and train regularly, maintaining firearm proficiency.
Prior to hiring the guards, Patel’s car was vandalized and an ATM was stolen from his gas station. But FOX News notes Patel’s observation that crimes–including loitering–ended once he hired security.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. AWR Hawkins holds a PhD in Military History with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
————————————————————————————– If the state won’t do its job than somebody is going to have to pick up the slack. I really think that we are going see a LOT more of this coming down the pike! Grumpy
As a native Californian, I want to thank the Sunshine State for making us look so much better! Grumpy
John Marcano, 53 went out with a bang!
Salisbury Fire Department photo
SALISBURY, Maryland – Firefighters in Maryland say an 11-year-old boy suffered minor burns after racing back into a burning apartment building to rescue his 2-year-old sister.
The blaze broke out Tuesday evening on the second floor of a two-story apartment building in Salisbury, which is in Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
According to the state fire marshal’s office, the boy fled the building when smoke alarms started going off, but then he realized his sister was still inside. That’s when he went back up to the burning second floor to rescue her, suffering a minor burn to his arm in the process.
Salisbury Fire Department photo
The boy’s injuries were so minor that he did not need to be treated at the scene. His sister, meanwhile, was not hurt.
The children’s names were not released.
Salisbury Fire Department photo
Salisbury firefighters had the blaze under control within 10 minutes, but two of the eight apartments were left uninhabitable as a result of the fire. The Red Cross was helping the displaced residents.
Investigators ruled the fire accidental, blaming an “unspecified electrical event” in a second-floor bedroom outlet.
While Hochul was trying to make the case that preventing responsible gun owners from being able to exercise their right to carry is beneficial to public safety, however, an incident in Largo, Florida that unfolded just a few hours before the debate in New York once again proved the value of the right to bear arms; not only for self-defense but for the defense of others as well.
A bystander drew his gun on a man accused of beating and stomping on his pregnant girlfriend outside a Publix super market, ending the “brutal” attack, Florida deputies say. The incident occurred around 5:15 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 22, in the parking lot of the Largo grocery store, according to an arrest affidavit.
The woman told Pinellas County deputies that her boyfriend, Cole Danisment, 27, got angry and punched her in the face repeatedly. She fell to the ground, and Danisment is then accused of stomping on her head and upper body.
The woman told deputies that Danisment knew she was 14 weeks pregnant with his unborn child. A man who witnessed the attack said he feared for the woman’s life, prompting him to intervene. Danisment didn’t stop brutalizing the woman until the witness pulled a gun on him, according to the affidavit.
According to police, Danisment had a no-contact order issued just last week after another domestic violence arrest that prohibited him from being anywhere near the woman he allegedly assaulted. That court order didn’t stop him from allegedly carrying out the brutal assault of his girlfriend, obviously. It took a stranger who was lawfully carrying concealed to bring the attack to a close without it escalating any further.
Under the concealed carry restrictions imposed by Kathy Hochul and her anti-gun allies in the New York legislature, that armed citizen would have been committing a felony offense if he’d saved that woman from being assaulted in a grocery store parking lot in Albany or Westchester County. Private property is considered a “gun-free zone” by default under New York’s new laws, and unless the grocery store had explicitly posted signage allowing concealed carry on the premises the armed citizen’s life-saving actions would likely have been “celebrated” with his arrest and prosecution.
The sad truth is that Kathy Hochul’s “public safety” measures have largely been aimed at restricting the public’s ability to protect themselves and others. Even now she and her buddies like Attorney General Letitia James are fighting in court to prevent responsible gun owners from exercising their right to carry, including pastors who were previously able to carry at church, arguing that by making it illegal to do so the law will somehow stop determined killers from invading the sanctuary and targeting the parishioners inside. In Hochul’s view, no one is really responsible enough to carry a firearm for self-defense, so their ability must be curtailed and criminalized as much as possible.
As we once again saw in Florida on Tuesday night, that kind of mentality puts good people at risk. Armed citizens save lives, and I hope that voters across the country reject the anti-gun ideology offered by Democrats like Hochul on Election Day.
