Don, who should know given his background, makes a valid point when he notes that the military award system can be very political. I did not interpret his comments as an attack on either Kerry or Clark. It is a well known fact that "awards inflation" is a problem that dates back to Vietnam. If I recall correctly, there was quite a bit of controversy about the number of medals that were handed out after Kosovo.
Do a quick search on the web and you will find numerous articles on this subject. Here is one from Stars & Stripes.
stripes.com
'Awards inflation' dates back to Vietnam
By Franklin Fisher, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Sunday, November 17, 2002
A string of controversies over what the military calls “awards inflation” dates back to the Vietnam War.
In 1974, a year after the United States had withdrawn its troops from Vietnam, the Army moved to reverse its policies amid widespread criticism it handed out awards far too generously.
At the time, retired Army Gen. William C. Westmoreland, former U.S. commander in Vietnam, said the Army had pursued a liberal policy on decorations to give a measure of recognition to soldiers in the war zone.
“It started with Vietnam,” said retired Marine Sgt. Maj. William F. Carroll, a veteran of Vietnam War combat who holds the Bronze Star for valor and the Purple Heart.
He remembers the Army’s reputation for awarding the Army Commendation Medal and Bronze Star.
“On my way home my second time, we were in Japan and there was a plane of Marines and then a plane of Army guys, and there were comments among the Marines — ‘Damn! All these guys, they all got Army Coms and Bronze Stars.’ I could have sworn that about half the guys on that plane” had one of the two medals, “versus very few Marines.”
In an irony of the period, statistics showed that more medals had been awarded in 1970 — after the U.S. troop pullout was under way and the ground war had become limited — than any other year of the war.
Even by early 1971, according to published reports during that period, U.S. troops received more than 100,000 Air Medals, Army Commendation Medals and Bronze Stars. The Army’s Vietnam War figures for 1969 showed 187 of every 1,000 soldiers exposed to combat each year were given Bronze Stars; 479 of every 1,000 received Air Medals; and 176 per 1,000 were given Army Commendation Medals.
One controversy still vividly remembered by many in the U.S. military occurred after the 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada. The Army bestowed 8,612 medals for individual performance in the Grenada campaign, although it never had more than 7,000 troops on the island, according to published news accounts.
About 50 medals went to personnel who were as far from the battle zone as the Pentagon. Other awards went to staff and rear-area support troops at Fort Bragg, N.C., home of the 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Stewart, Ga., and Fort Lewis, Wash.
At the time, the Army defended its awards system, calling it “a valuable and effective leadership tool to build unit morale and esprit.”
And the Army explained, “Many support and staff personnel received these awards for their support of the Grenada operation outside of the actual combat zone or for service in Grenada after hostilities had ceased.”
By the mid-1980s, the Army was awarding proportionately more medals than it did at the height of the Vietnam War. At the time, military spokesmen said the explosion in military awards may have stemmed from the pressures of maintaining an all-volunteer force, and from a tendency of commanders to give awards to personnel they wanted to see stay in the military, according to published news accounts.
In 1985, the Army awarded more than 264,321 medals and the Air Force 103,709. The Navy and Marine Corps said they had no records on individual awards issued at that time.
By contrast, in 1968 – one of the bloodiest years in the Vietnam War, the Army awarded a total of 416,693 decorations among 1.57 million active-duty personnel, a ratio of about one award for every four soldiers. By 1985, the ratio was one award for every three personnel.
“It would appear they were passing out medals with paychecks,” retired Vice Adm. Lawson P. Ramage, said at the time. Ramage received a Medal of Honor in World War II. “You have to wonder,” he said, “what kind of person is going to be enticed to stay in the service by a cheap medal.”
Observers like Carroll see problems in the Gulf War medal statistics too.
According to figures obtained from the services by Stars and Stripes, for the 1991 Operation Desert Storm phase of the war, the Army awarded 27,976 Bronze Stars, equal to 9.41 percent of its in-theater troop strength of 297,000.
That compared with 509 awarded by the Marine Corps, equal to seven-tenths of 1 percent of its in-theater strength of 69,656. The Air Force awarded 822 Bronze Stars, equal to 1.35 percent of its in-theater strength of 60,830. And the Navy awarded 852 Bronze Stars, or 1 percent of its in-theater strength of 83,599.
Also in Desert Storm, the Army awarded 81,979 Army Commendation Medals, equal to 27.6 percent of its in-theater strength. By comparison, the medal’s interservice counterparts accounted for only 4.7 percent of Marines, 4.34 percent of Air Force members, and 7 percent of Navy personnel.
“So you can see where the Army is way over,” said Carroll, the retired Marine, “even just by percentage of medals. A fourth of the Army (in Desert Storm) got an Army Commendation Medal. That’s outrageous.”
An Army spokesman declined to discuss specific statistical comparisons among the services, saying such comparisons could be misleading because of fundamental differences in the size, mission, and culture of the services.
“We feel our approach best addresses our internal needs, recognizes outstanding service and helps foster teamwork, esprit, and further positive efforts,” the spokesman said.
In the 1999 NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia, dubbed Operation Allied Force, the Air Force and Navy awarded Bronze Stars to officers who were far from the combat zone, including staff officers in the Pentagon and those managing maintenance crews at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, from which B-2 bombers operated.
The Army awarded no Bronze Stars for the conflict, which forced Yugoslav forces out of Kosovo, and even denied nominations for Special Forces troops along Albania’s frontier. They guided air strikes and worked with guerrilla forces.
Earlier this year, Air Force Secretary James G. Roche authorized creation of the Air Force Campaign Medal, to “appropriately recognize our people who contribute directly and significantly to the success of wartime campaigns from outside the area of combat operations.” |
