If we can’t be honest and realistic about the threat our civilization faces, we cannot win.
14 thoughts on “The Purple Hearts Of Fort Hood”
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If we can’t be honest and realistic about the threat our civilization faces, we cannot win.
Comments are closed.
The president’s “no faith justifies” comment has certainly been taken out of context. As far as I can tell, he meant: Islam may demand the slaughter of innocents, but that doesn’t justify it (i.e. make it morally right).
There’s no justufication under military standards for awarding any Purple Hearts.
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A Purple Heart is awarded to any member of the armed forces (including the Coast Guard) who is killed or wounded in action.
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As much as it sucks, they simply aren’t eligible. Sitting in a big paperwork facility isn’t a combat zone. They were processing for deployment to a combat zone, but not IN said zone. Likewise, no one who helped save their comrades is likely to be considered for decorations for bravery.
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Having said that, the Democrats will undoubtedly bend the rules this time. And the PH, will fall into the same category as wearing a beret in the Army. It will be no big deal to get one.
DS, you have a good point, but what do we call it when the enemy brings the war zone home to us?
Maybe not according to the stilted 20th century rules of warfare that the bureaucracy plays by. Clearly the enemy views things differently. The dispensation of medals is secondary, yet symptomatic of the greater problem, and the tragic part will be that even if Cool-n-the-gang hand out the medals, it will only be masking the problem.
I’m pretty sure that NO ONE ever considered sitting in “X” office as dangerous before. Not a stateside office or facility anyway.
The problem lies in the undeclared, undefined, semi-war we fight now. Hell, they’ve changed the name of the war, operation, contingency plan. If it has no name, how can it have defined boundaries? It’s a bad situation for sure.
I have a question for the groundpounders here.
Wasn’t there a time, up to the Viet Nam era, that as soon as troops started processing for deployment, that they were REQUIRED to carry their weapon, even on the bases stateside? Seems to me it was meant to get them used to “living” with their weapons. I seem to remember when that being in the news when the directive “changed” at Ft Bragg.
If everyone had been armed, perhaps Maj. Hasan would have gotten off many fewer shots? And dead murderers, regardless of paygrade, need no trail.
“I’m pretty sure that NO ONE ever considered sitting in “X” office as dangerous before. Not a stateside office or facility anyway.”
Au contraire. From 1980 to 1989, my office was on an Air Force base, where we ran the U.S. ICBM development programs. I knew we were on the Soviet target list, and woke up in a cold sweat on several nights.
I have heard that the Discovery Channel did a story on the Soviet Strategic Rocket forces just after the Cold War ended. On a tour of missile silos, the commentator asked his guide (the CinC of SSRF) to tell him about the one they were standing over. It was an SS-9 with a 25 Mt warhead, targeted at…Norton Air Force Base, California.
MfK,
OK, well then, once, MY office was the first US ship to track and get electronic warfare intel, on the first Soviet Air Craft Carrier, the Minsk. It really pissed them off.
To show how pissed, they loaded and unloaded and pointed MISSILES at us, for a week, every time we got close enough to see them doing it.
Of course that negates the obvious danger of being stationed at 32nd Street and then Norfolk, and both were prime ICBM targets during the Cold War. Just like Norton was.
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I ASS U MEd that everyone knew I meant “dangerous place”, from a lone gunmen scenario, or even a group of gunmen scenario, like the radicals who were going to attack the NJ base. And until Hasan lost his marbles and shot almost 50 people of course, no one expected OUR guys to shoot OUR guys, wholesale.
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Certainly no one thought they’d be giving out Purple Hearts at Ft Hood, from “action” at Ft Hood. And there were no directives saying, “…and if you see Officers walking around, DUCK!!”
Up until that event, “fragging” was done TO the officers, not BY the officers.
I really, really try hard to refrain from snark. But I suppose no one at Pearl Harbor on 12-7-1941 should have been commended to receive a medal either.
Paul,
after the war was declared, the attack was considered to have been in a combat zone. But retroactively.
(Oh, crap, there’s that word again. Declared.)
I’ll guarantee you, there is paperwork, written just that way, somewhere, in the WWII Archives. Allowing for medals, awards, etc. be given, when there was NO war that day. Much has changed from Dec 7th, 1941, to today, but the military love of regulations and paperwork drills goes back MUCH farther than that.
I blame George Bush. For not declaring war that is.
Well, there is the AUMF, Schtumpf. The Bush Administration always claimed it gave powers essentially identical to a declaration of war.
Interesting thought exercise brought about by outrageous times and events. I serve at The Pentagon, where battle dress uniforms/utilities have been the main rule of the day (two years ago, Mondays went back to class A’s) since some nice folks hit it with a plane. If someone set off an improvised explosive device at The Pentagon, I’m guessing the people injured or killed there would get a Purple Heart, if (and this may be a big if) the perpetrator could be construed as an Islamic terrorist.
Assuming someone comes out to declare the Ft. Hood mess an Islamic terrorist attack, then the battle front was brought to our soldiers by the enemy (I know, in this case the enemy happened to be wearing a US uniform…ugh) and that paperwork facility became a battlefield when shots started. THEN Purple Hearts would be in order.
Given the response so far, I’m not holding my breath.
“Paul,
after the war was declared, the attack was considered to have been in a combat zone. But retroactively. ”
So, the crew of the Reuben James was also in one of those retroactive combat zones?
A quick search suggests that military victims of terrorist attacks are eligible for the Purple Heart with the post facto authorization of the relevant service secretary of the service in question, since 1973.
OK, how did this turn into, dissect Schtumpy’s comments?
I made no comments, statement or inferences about anyone on convoy duty in the N. Atlantic. I don’t have any idea what their status was. I was drawing to the common idea of SITTING in Pearl Harbor, out of the known combat zone, and SITTING in Ft Hood, out of the known combat zone.
Personally, I think after the second plane struck on 9/11, that rule became utter stupidity at it’s best. ut we live in the All-American, PC ideas first, State Department doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, best foot forward, world. We are all in a battle zone, but the last three guys who live(d) in the WH, don’t see it. They keep uncovering plots to attack civilian and military targets, but we’re not in a combat zone. The islamofascists said they are at war with us, but we’re not in a combat zone. It’s stupid Paul.
I truly think we’ve been living in a combat zone since the first WTC bombing, 1993, but I don’t live at 1600 Penn. Ave, so I don’t get a say.