On combat awards: keep the politics out
Combat awards for the soldiers killed in action in Jordan remain in doubt:
“It was unclear Friday [Feb 2] whether Army soldiers killed and injured … will be awarded combat accolades… But the service is still mulling whether the soldiers are eligible for combat badges and Purple Hearts.”
The military and veteran community has a high regard for combat decorations, badges, and other accouterments. It tells a service member’s story. Yet, there has been a corruption of their stated purpose driven by political considerations.
Strangely, the DoD does not have a definition for combat in its Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms (2023).
Perhaps if they spent less time and money on rooting out the hordes of white extremists in the military services and infusing CRT and DEI into the five-sided puzzle palace and spending more time on defining what it is they actually do, we might have done better in the past 20 years or so of fruitless military operations.
This reeks of the same politics that arose around the terrorist attack at Fort Hood, which the Obama Administration wanted to spin as “workplace violence.” It took congressional effort and public shaming to change that position. Even then, those brave enough to charge or challenge the shooter, Major Nidal Hasan, received Soldier’s Medals, a peacetime award for bravery at the risk of life.
Perhaps they will continue the farce even further and enter the soldiers’ deaths as “non-hostile dead: died of wounds or injury” or “accident” like they did for soldiers killed on the Korean DMZ by North Korean military forces, all so as not to spark a war.
The Army does not have a definition of “combat,” but they do of “close combat;”
1-63. …Close combat is warfare carried out on land in a direct-fire fight, supported by direct and indirect fires and other assets. Units involved in close combat employ direct fire weapons supported by indirect fire, air-delivered fires, and nonlethal engagement means. Units in close combat defeat or destroy enemy forces and seize and retain ground. Close combat at lower echelons contains many more interactions between friendly and enemy forces than any other form of combat.
Stop the nonsense and bestow on these dead soldiers their combat awards. Let the grieving families know that their sons and daughters were killed by an enemy of the United States while doing their duty.
Cincinnatus is a retired Army infantry officer as was his father; his wife is a retired Army officer; his child is a serving Navy surface warfare officer.
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