It's this kind of rank stupidity that caused me to successfully fight to keep my kid out of the Marines.
From: This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here …
Dems Clueless About Combat
February 21st, 2013Warfare has progressed geometrically since I was a young sergeant on the ground in Vietnam. The huge advances in computer and electronic capabilities have given our American forces capabilities never before possessed in any of our previous wars. Among the most widely known of these is drone warfare, wherein an unmanned, armed, aerial vehicle enters enemy airspace guided by an office-based pilot somewhere many thousands of miles from the actual conflict and launches lethal missiles against detected targets.
To this old infantryman’s way of thinking, that is a great concept. The idea of being able to win wars from the air goes back to WWI and was used to greatest effect in WWII when strategic bombings in Germany and Japan greatly degraded the fighting ability of both those countries and undoubtedly saved tens of thousands of American servicemen’s’ lives. I can’t begin to express my gratitude to those Air Force and Naval aviators who flew over my ground positions and delivered lethal ordinance on my enemies in the hills, mountains and rice paddies of South Vietnam. But for them I might not be writing this.
So keep all that in mind when evaluating my take on this new Defense Department medal for those who pilot the drones. We are going to create a new class of combat award for a group of technicians who through the incredibly complex inter-connections between their U.S.-based control centers in the docile deserts of Nevada or some other undisclosed remote location and the combat zone, are able to provide close air support for our ground troops or air strikes deep within enemy territory. Let’s picture this:
Somewhere in Afghanistan a small team of American soldiers, commanded by an Army captain, occupies a forward outpost. They are so far into hostile country that they must and can only be supplied by helicopter. That means then that they only get the minimum necessities of their needs. They have no running water source so by the time they have been there to attract an attack from the enemy, they have become persistently and continually hungry and hygienically ripe indeed. At 2:00 am on a cold morning they get hit by a large enemy force which has every intention of overrunning them and killing them to the very last man.
They inform their headquarters of the attack and within minutes that headquarters is busy directing an armed drone to assist in their defense. On the other side of the world, some Air Force captain, who slept comfortably at home last night with his spouse in military quarters somewhere in the Nevada desert, and who had a full, hot breakfast this morning, sips his coffee and views the information coming in through his computer. With a few strokes on his keyboard he is able to re-direct the mission of an armed drone hovering somewhere over Afghanistan to the beleaguered outpost which by that time has endured many casualties and is in very real danger of being overrun.
Through damage inflicted on the assaulting enemy forces by both the Hellfire missiles fired from the drone at the command of that comfortably ensconced Air Force captain somewhere in Nevada and the perimeter defense directed and coordinated by the Army captain in command on the ground, the attack is beaten back with but a few American troops killed and several more wounded.
As all the after-action reports are filed and this minor event gets logged into that bottomless swamp of history of American military combat, there will be those singled out for their performance under fire and recommended for awards for valor. Seldom in the history of the United States Army or the United States Marine Corps has there been such a ground fight when some brave soldier or Marine did not distinguish himself with exceptional valor. They, justifiably, should have that valor recognized by a grateful nation in the form of a medal.
But what about that Air Force captain back there in Nevada who entered the proper sequence on his keyboard to launch those Hellfire missiles that did in fact help break the back of the Taliban assault? Did he contribute to the victory? Without question he did. Were his actions valorous in the way we understand that term to mean courage in the face of a lethal threat? Of course they were not. Does he then deserve an award for service and valor in the face of the enemy equivalent to that which those who faced that enemy on the ground under extreme duress and hardship do?
That’s pretty simple to answer for anyone with a lick of common sense. Apparently however, our uninformed, never-uniformed, Commander-in-Chief and his equally uninformed and never-uniformed Secretary of Defense do not possess that lick. In their eyes, the comfortable, coffee-drinking young officer lounging in front of his computer console in Nevada, what airborne troops would call chairborne, is entitled to an equivalent or superior award for valor as those guys who fought it out on the ground. Should there be an award for drone pilots? Sure, but it should be to recognize their technical proficiency not their valor; with one exception: if that drone pilot is operating within some sort of mobile command post in a forward operating area and his post comes under fire in the course of battle, then a ”V” device could be awarded in recognition of that reality, as we now do with the Bronze Star.
Doesn’t this fiasco say it all about how clueless liberal Democrats are about the realities of combat?
Crossposted at American Thinker.
Dude, war is about death, not honor or manly virtues.
ReplyDeleteCome back when you've played.
ReplyDeleteMartin, war is about defending our way of life and that of others.
ReplyDeleteHonor and virtue is off the battle field. Valor is for on the battlefield and all too often is received posthumously, someone giving their life in order to save many more.
In spite of what you have heard, we are not an aggressor nation. The bad apples are few, but receive all of the notoriety by an all too willing treasonous media.
But to equate the performance of someone sitting in a comfortable chair with a joy stick in hand watching a monitor screen thousands of miles away to those bleeding, covering each other and defending not only buddies, but often villages, townspeople of women and children is just wrong.
There is no comparison.
Lew, your values, as much as you believe in them, are not mine, nor, apparently, do they even represent the modern military of gays, women, and service medals for tech people.
ReplyDeleteAre you being deliberately obtuse here, Martin? This has nothing to do with the size of your crank or lack thereof.
ReplyDeleteWhen you were serving in the military, were you even remotely aware of the vagaries of combat? Do you understand what this is supposed to mean?
Degrading awards for combat in favor of awards for video-game prowess is the thing.
In fact, that you don't even know the difference between a "service medal" and a "combat medal" tends to go to your ignorance about the entirety of the subject.
Service medal: Good Conduct Medal.
Combat Medal: Bronze Star with V device.
Qualification Badge: Obama Video Game Medal.
The ONLY way a medal is a "combat medal" is if the target you are firing at CAN FIRE BACK AT YOU.
A joy-stick jockey siting in Nevada and thinking about the steak he's going to get at the O-Club as soon as he's done pushing his buttons is NOT in combat.
COMBAT is what the military is about. Any idiot can push buttons. And if those guys/women want a medal, then they need to get their asses out there where the Silver Stars grow.
And as a veteran, you should be aware of that.
And Martin, here's the thing. The combat capability of the military is sinking by the second, in part, because of the social idiocy you seem so enamored off. But like those supporting that stupidity, they won't be out there with their asses on the line, and neither will their kids.
It's all beneath them, you see. And it's easy to kibitz when you've never bothered to play the game.
Just ask the president.
ReplyDeleteKelly, the military is NOT a religion. You take the 250,000well-trained, super-muscular, awesomely armed guys on the ground, and I'll take the gay girl launching the nukes.
p.s. If you're feeling nostalgic, come over to my house and ride the steam train.