Copyright John T. Reed 2014

I am apparently the only one on earth willing to say this, but it appears that Obama just gave out 24 Medals of Honor—21 of them posthumous—to blacks, Latinos, and Jews an the basis of affirmative action, not merit for the purpose of turning out the black, Latino, and Jewish vote on election day, 2014.

The basic idea is that these guys should have gotten the Medal of Honor at the time but got some lesser medal because their superiors were bigots.

So name the superiors in question and state the evidence of that. Some are no doubt still living and I suspect would dispute that. Absent that, we need to start handing out some more of what are called “devices” in the U.S. medal business.

There are two medals I know of where you can get them with or without a “V” device that stands for “valor:” the Bronze Star and the Army Commendation medal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22V%22_Device

The criterion in the Army for the V is

participation in acts of heroism involving conflict with an armed enemy

One of my West Point roommates got two bronze-stars with “V” devices in Vietnam.

I think the Purple Heart is a stupid medal that should be abolished. If anyone is going to get a medal for an American military person getting wounded it should be the enemy guy who shot him. As General Patton said,

I want you to remember, that no poor dumb bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it, by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.

Nor should any poor dumb bastard get a medal for getting wounded for his country. You win a medal for making some other poor dumb bastard get wounded for his country.

If you give out medals for being shot, you encourage people to get shot. And that is literally true. There are American military personnel who are deliberately behaving in ways so as to get wounded in wars because they want the Purple Heart to brag about back in “the world.” John Kerry got three of them, at a time when Navy policy was you immediately went home when you go the third. He was only in Vietnam for four months as a result of his third Purple Heart.

If A and B are in combat standing next to each other doing the same thing and B gets wounded, what did he do to deserve a medal that A did not do? Nothing. That being the case, he got a medal for nothing. Nobody should get medals for doing nothing if medals are to have any value. Maybe he got wounded for being less lucky. If so, it’s an unlucky medal not a bravery medal. Should we be giving out medals for being unlucky? Like I said: stupid.

If we must award Purple Hearts, I say make sure they all have a “device” and here are the “devices” I recommend from my longer article on “wounded warriors” in general:

Now, in the interest of truth in advertising, let’s create devices for the Purple Heart as follows:

• ISU device which means I got wounded because I Screwed Up. (John McCain gets that for his getting shot down and breaking both arms while ejecting improperly.)

• HSU device which means I got wounded because He Screwed Up where he is a U.S. military colleague. (those who initially survived the torpedo sinking of the Indianapolis in World War II but then died because no one went looking for them)

• FF device which means I got wounded by Friendly Fire. (Pat Tillman getting shot by his fellow “elite” ranger Trevor Alders)

• NGR device which means I got wounded for No Good Reason, e.g., my battalion commander sent us out on a “show presence” patrol so his bar on the brigade commander’s patrols-sent-out bar graph would be at least as big as the other battalion commanders’. Almost every Purple Heart awarded since the Korean War probably deserves one of these. I lost part of my hearing in part so our battalion commander could fire at least as many shells per day as the other battalion commanders in the corps. You can see photos of the actual, exact guns that damaged my hearing in the “Here are some photos of Fire base Wade” link above. When I asked the fire direction center what they were shooting at, they said H&I (harassment and interdiction), in other words, firing into the night for no good reason. Hell, I might be entitled to a Purple Heart with the NGR device!

• no device at all if you got wounded while doing your job competently in a valid mission (a few of those in Desert Storm)

In my article on all military medals, I said I generally respected some awards like the CIB and the Medal of Honor. Scratch that. Readers told me CIB stood for “crossed Iraqi border” in the 100-hour-long first Gulf War. They were harder to come buy in Vietnam. And now that Obama is handing out Medals of Honor for affirmative-action, Turn-out-the-vote reasons, I now need to ask about the details of each Medal of Honor before I respect it.

Henceforth, Medals of Honor should have the following devices:

• AA device which is for Affirmative Action for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity not above and beyond the call of duty by a Democrat member of an identity group voting bloc like Latinos, blacks, or Jews.

• TOTV Turn-Out-The-Vote device for being Latino, black, Jewish, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans-gender, or a woman in an election year in which the president’s approval rating is below 50% and having gotten a lesser bravery medal for some past military action

• No device at all if you are a Caucasian or Asian who distinguished himself by acts of gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty in combat.

Et tu Medal of Honor?

Are you enjoying your eight years of Chicago politics yet?

John T. Reed