Backlash against new US medal for drone pilots
File photo
WASHINGTON: Should US drone pilots or cyber warriors thousands of miles from the battlefield be eligible for a more prestigious combat medal than soldiers wounded or killed in action?
The Pentagon concluded this week the answer is “yes” — at least in extraordinary circumstances, and announced the creation of the Distinguished Warfare Medal, outranking even the Bronze Star.
While supporters cheered America’s nod to the changing nature of warfare, it has triggered an angry backlash with some veterans and active-duty troops upset over the most substantial shakeup in the hierarchy of military medals since World War Two.
Opponents say the new medal’s rank is too high and sends a signal — inadvertently, perhaps — that the Pentagon does not sufficiently value the sacrifices of front-line troops.
For Brian Jopek, whose 20-year-old son, Ryan, earned a Bronze Star when he was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq in 2006, the debate is intensely personal.
“To me it’s just a slap in the face, not only for my son, me, other members of my family,” Jopek, who also served in Iraq and is now a journalist in Wisconsin, told Reuters.
“But for anyone who’s ever received (the Bronze Star) for actions in combat.”
Jopek said he has written to President Barack Obama and to his congressman, hoping the policy can be reversed.
The Veterans of Foreign Wars, which describes itself as America’s largest combat veterans’ organisation, strongly objected to the decision.
“Medals that can only be earned in direct combat must mean more than medals awarded in the rear,” John Hamilton, the VFW’s national commander, said in a statement.
Websites and blogs, including the VFW’s Facebook page, were filled with angry comments, some calling the new medal a “joke”.
Advocates at the Pentagon and beyond say the new medal is playing catch-up with reality.
“I’ve seen firsthand how modern tools, like remotely piloted platforms and cyber systems, have changed the way wars are fought,” said outgoing Defence Secretary and former CIA Director Leon Panetta, announcing the medal on Wednesday.
“This award recognises the reality of the kind of technological warfare that we are engaged in, in the 21st century.”
Peter Singer, an expert on the new technologies in warfare at the Brookings Institution think tank, said it was an inevitability, noting there are now 20,000 unmanned systems, or drones, in the air or on the ground.
“The US Air Force now trains more unmanned systems operators than it does manned fighter plane and bomber plane pilots combined,” he said.
Juliet Beyler, the acting director of officer and enlisted personnel management in the Pentagon, said candidates for the medal could include a service member involved in a cyber attack on a specific military target.
“This is for direct impacts,” she told the Pentagon’s American Forces Press Service on Friday, adding the award was retroactive to Sept 11, 2001.
No valour required
To put it in context, the Distinguished Warfare Medal is the ninth highest medal awarded by the Pentagon, higher than the Purple Heart for troops wounded in battle.
Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator nominated to become the next US defence secretary, was wounded in Vietnam and was awarded two Purple Hearts, for example.
The new medal is the only combat medal that a military service member can receive without physically being in the same geographic area where combat took place.
Previously, drone pilots who remotely guide missiles against important targets in countries like Pakistan or Yemen would not qualify for combat awards because their acts technically lacked “valour” — a key requirement.
Valour, as defined by the military, involves extraordinary acts of heroism “while engaged in direct combat with an enemy with exposure to enemy hostilities and personal risk”.
The new medal is higher than the Bronze Star with a “V” for valour. Only 2.5 per cent of the more than 160,000 Bronze Stars awarded by the Army since Sept 11, 2001, have been for valour, according to Pentagon data.
Medal of Honour recipient and Vietnam veteran Paul Bucha told Reuters the decision could affect morale, and noted the significance of the Bronze Star in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
“Are you saying that guy in the Pentagon did something I could not have done, even though I was running around in the desert? Where people could shoot at me?,” Bucha said, summing up the views of many veterans.
“People are going to be outraged.”
To honour the Cyber Warriors is to praise a murderer; would this a right sentence?
A cyber warrior sits inside a safe, secure and with highest level of security provided for the group of cyber warriors uses technology to kill a stranger. The cyber warrior does not know the actual identity of the stranger. The cyber warrior does not know the name of the stranger. The cyber warrior does not know what is the reason for killing the stranger. The cyber warrior is not related to the stranger all aspects of the human life. The cyber warrior is not war with the stranger since the stranger is not war with the cyber warrior.
The stranger is fighting in Afghanistan for freedom on behalf of the Afghan people to get rid of foreign troops. The stranger and his fellow strangers face difficulty in maintaining a base in Pakistan. The Pakistan government is always under pressure from the United States government since the 1980′s till date to carry out its military operations. This is because the Pakistan government have to regularly money from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund. Both organisations are dominated by the governments of Western Europe and United States. The Pakistan government has no choice but to attack the group of strangers. This group of strangers are descendants by faith or by flesh of the Mujahideens of the 1980s. The Mujahideens lost 1 million soldiers fighting to free Afghanistan from the Soviet Union and at the same time being manipulated by the United States government to redeem for their lost of pride in invading Vietnam.
The American government should praise their murders under the guise of cyber warriors. In the old days, they are called the crusading knights.
Medals in wars are for risking ones life and not just for killing perceived enemies.
This is going to be wordy.
My father, James Michael Tate, was awarded a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart for actions under enemy fire during the Vietnam War. What he had to go through in that war, so affected him, that to his dying day, he rarely spoke about it. When he returned home from that war, he was spat on by hippies at the airport, in front of my mother.
All my father got for his sacrifices was a pat on the back and a couple of cheap metal decorations to wear on his chest. To people like my father, myself, and others whom have served, those cheap pieces of metal mean something. They tell the story of what you’ve gone through, what you’ve sacrificed, and what you’ve accomplished.
Now, the Department of Defense is issuing out a new medal for drone pilots. This new medal outranks both the Bronze Star with Valor Device, and the Purple Heart. Now don’t get me wrong. Warfare is changing, and this needs to be recognized with some sort of award for service. Making the award so high ranking, however, sends out a clear message. That message, whether intentional or not, is that the military senior staff places a higher value on men, whom sit in an air conditioned trailer, killing the enemy from the safety of a FOB, over men with rifles in their hands that are staring the enemy in the eye, and risking their lives for the mission.
To the Department of Defense, the Pentagon, and the Military Chiefs, I say this…
You have crapped all over my father’s legacy, and the legacy of all the men and women that came before and after him.
Shame on all of you.
If I say this is a cat then this is a cat, no argument, please.
It is a golden tailed retriever, sorry. Can you even see the whiskers?