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Staff Sgt. Salvatore A. Giunta, 25, was awarded the Medal of Honor Tuesday, the first living service member to receive the medal since Vietnam.
From the New York Times:
In a packed ceremony in the East Room before Sergeant Giunta’s family, squad mates and the parents of two soldiers who were killed in the ambush, Mr. Obama recounted the events on the night of Oct. 25, 2007 [note: that link leads to a superb article about the events described below].
“The moon was full; the light it cast was enough to travel by without using their night-vision goggles,” Mr. Obama said, with Sergeant Giunta standing at his side, looking straight ahead. “They hadn’t traveled a quarter-mile before the silence was shattered. It was an ambush so close that the cracks of the guns and the whizzes of the bullets were simultaneous.”
The two lead squad men went down. So did a third who was struck in the helmet. Sergeant Giunta charged into the wall of bullets to pull him to safety, Mr. Obama said. Sergeant Giunta was hit twice, but was protected by his body armor.
The sergeant could see the other two wounded Americans, Mr. Obama recounted.
By now, the East Room was so silent you could hear a rustle from across the room. One Army officer took out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes.
Sergeant Giunta looked down as the president described how he and his squad mates threw grenades, which they used as cover to run toward the wounded soldiers. All this, they did under constant fire, Mr. Obama said. Finally, they reached one of the men. As other soldiers tended to him, Sergeant Giunta sprinted ahead.
“He crested a hill alone with no cover but the dust kicked up by the storm of bullets still biting into the ground,” Mr. Obama said.
And there Sergeant Giunta saw “a chilling sight” — the silhouettes of two insurgents carrying away the other wounded American — his friend, Sgt. Joshua C. Brennan. Sergeant Giunta leaped forward, and fatally shot one insurgent while wounding the other. Then he rushed to his friend. He dragged him to cover, and stayed with him, trying to stop the bleeding, for 30 minutes, until help arrived.
Sergeant Brennan died later of his wounds. So did Specialist Hugo V. Mendoza, the platoon medic. Five others were wounded.
Speaking to reporters after receiving the award, Sergeant Giunta said the honor was “bittersweet.”
“I lost two dear friends of mine,” he said. “I would give this back in a second to have my friends with me right now.”
It's an amazing tale of heroism and loss, isn't it? So what does the right-wing think about it? Bryan Fischer of the right-wing Christian group, the American Family Association, thinks that we've "feminized" the Medal of Honor, because "we now award it only for preventing casualties, not for inflicting them."
Yeah, Giunta didn't kill enough people when he rushed through that hail of bullets, huh? What, only one confirmed kill? How dare we honor courage like that? Have we become a bunch of sissies or something? Of course, it's our brave right-wing commenters back here at home, pointing out such flaws in perfect safety, who are the real heroes, right?
How can these right-wing chickenhawks possibly think that the award has been degraded? Note that only four Medals of Honor have been awarded in Afghanistan (including Giunta's) and only four in Iraq - and all but Giunta's were awarded posthumously. Yeah, we're giving them out like crackerjack prizes, huh?
I would explain to Fischer that fighting against ambushing terrorists is considerably different from our traditional wars between nation states, where large body counts might be expected, but I hate to dignify his objection by even responding to it. It's stupid, anyway. If you look at past awards, saving fellow service members has always been a big part of their heroism.
Of course, I suspect that Fischer's big problem is simply that Barack Obama was involved in the ceremony. If Obama has anything to do with an issue, they're going to be against it. Still, this is another example of complete lunacy coming from the right. When will we Americans start to recognize this? It's just insane.
Staff Sgt. Giunta, a hero in truth, should not be put in this position. He deserves this award. And he does not deserve the implication that his Medal of Honor has been tarnished somehow (or "feminized," in Fischer's immortal words). That's really disgusting, don't you think?
I think that the term "hero" is often misused these days. To pick just one example, it was applied to that airline pilot who successfully put his plane down in the water at New York after a bird strike, saving all of the passengers. He deserved great praise for his coolness and skill, but he was basically doing what he was trained to do and saving his own life in the process.
ReplyDeleteIn my view, true heroism is voluntarily putting yourself at grave risk to help others. Using that criterion, Sgt Guinta is indeed a true hero and richly deserves his medal.
I have noticed a tendency in western culture these days (which seems to be most marked in the USA) to regard killing as inherently virtuous. For instance, I recently sat through the film 'Die Hard 4'. I quite enjoyed the original film, but this one was rather dire - a mindless excuse for as many chases and explosions as possible. One element particularly struck me: the hero explicity regarded killing the main bad guy as the only answer to the problem, and the more bad guys he killed on the way, the better.
This also seems to be reflected in those computer games in which racking up the largest possible body count is the measure of success.
I think it was in one of Asimov's books (perhaps the 'Foundation' trilogy?) that he emphasised the principle: "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent". His point being that a truly intelligent response to a problem would recognise and deal with it long before it reached the stage when violence became the only remaining option. Somehow, I doubt that such a philosophy would get much of a hearing today.
Those are good points, Tony. We Americans seem to be eager to kill our enemies - so eager that we're unhappy without enemies. And it seems that everyone with a gun, in this gun-obsessed culture, can't wait to shoot someone with it (of course, that's almost always just a daydream, not reality).
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid, cowboy shows were popular, but most of those cowboys never killed anyone. At most, they'd shoot the gun out of their enemy's hand. And usually, they'd just rope the bad guy or leap on him from a horse.
Not anymore. As prudish as Americans have become about nudity, we eagerly accept graphic (make-believe) violence. Apparently, we feel helpless in the real world, so we want to see Rambo devastate our enemies - real and imagined - in our fantasies. It's really bizarre, and certainly rather disgusting.
We've become a nation of cowards who panic at the slightest threat, but have increasingly violent fantasies. And sadly, we seem to be less and less able to separate reality from make-believe. Is it possible for an entire nation to lose touch with reality? I wonder...
There's an old saying: "to a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail". The USA has the biggest hammer in the world, in terms of its armed forces, and gives the impression of just loving to use it.
ReplyDeleteA few years ago a US Army spokesman, on being challenged over the chaos in Iraq after Saddam was overthrown, said something like: "we don't do peacekeeping; we just break things and kill people". Fortunately senior commanders have learned a lot since then, and US Army operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have become far more subtle, restrained - and effective. General Petraeus recently stated: "Every Afghan civilian death diminishes our cause." Use of excessive force, he argued, could turn "tactical victories" into "strategic setbacks". No doubt some half-wits regard such an attitude as "feminized".
On the same theme, there's been some publicity recently in the UK about an incident in the former Yugoslavia in 1999. I actually remember it being reported at the time - but I don't know if it got any coverage in the USA: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11753050 Blunt's account has been confirmed by Gen. Jackson. Rather chilling, when you consider the potential for disaster.
Thanks for the link, Tony. That also shows why civilian control of the military is so critical. Military officers tend to be aggressive, eager to wield that "hammer."
ReplyDeleteThat's a necessary quality during wartime, but only if it's kept under control. Unfortunately, the American people are often eager to see that hammer wielded, too, as long as they don't have to take part themselves. The end of the draft in America has made this a far more popular choice.
That might be an example of unintended consequences. America these days has become a nation of chickenhawks, eager to see someone else wage war on their behalf. And with modern technology, we can watch it in real-time. It's almost like a video game or a movie. What fun, huh?