BlackFive

In fact, it is clear you still don’t know what you’re talking about and each time you try to justify your nonsense you look even worse.  Here, let me give you an example:

I’m not saying that our soldiers have become feminized in the least, especially those who have earned the Medal of Honor. It’s not our soldiers who have become feminized, it is the awards process that has become feminized.

What I am saying is that I am observing a trend in which we single out bravery in self-defense and yet seem hesitant to single out bravery in launching aggressive attacks that result in the deaths of enemy soldiers.

This is something only a person who has never worn a uniform could write.  It is the sort of nonsense that makes anyone who has served a day in uniform grind their teeth and plot mayhem.  It could only come from some pencil necked geek whose idea of war comes from an Xbox.

How in the hell, sir, do you suppose those who were in a position to earn the MOH got in the situation they were in?  By aggressively taking the war to the enemy, you boob.  We were the aggressor in Iraq.  We are the aggressor in Af/Pak.  This ain’t Normandy.  They don’t conveniently line up behind the freakin’ sea wall.  You have to go out there, find them and root them out.  And by George, they sometimes try to strike back.  Go freakin’ figure!

It’s called WAR you dope.  Something you’ve obviously never experienced and know precious little about. 

When SSG Robby Miller earned his posthumous Medal of Honor he was a part of an “aggressive” patrol sent out in a Taliban stronghold to root them out and kill them.  And that’s precisely what Miller did, until mortally wounded himself.  I’ve already acquainted you with SFC Paul Ray Smith.  Smith is estimated to have killed 50 bad guys.  Why?  Because we’d pushed out aggressively and turned over a hornet’s nest of enemy soldiers.

SSG Sal Giunta was a part of an operation looking for the Taliban with the aim of killing them.  He and his squad weren’t wandering around out there to give the Talibs target practice or hunkered down behind a rock while they bad guys took pot shots at them.

The point?  There is no freakin’ “trend” except between your rather large ears.

But he blathers on anyway, again trying to support the unsupportable.  And of course, it’s time for a little whine again:

It is striking that a certain amount of the criticism I have received actually verifies my thesis. In response to my call to also honor those who have killed bad guys in defense of our country, I have been called everything from savage to brute to bloodthirsty to anti-American to un-American to traitor to  “expletives deleted” to the antichrist himself.

Surely some of this supports my contention that we have become too squeamish to honor such valor. It’s almost as if it embarrasses us, as if we feel there is something inappropriate about awarding our highest honor to those who kill the enemy in battle. It is as if our culture has become so soft and so feminized that it makes us enormously uncomfortable to think about praising such actions. It’s like we know such warfare needs to be waged, but we’re hoping we don’t have to find out very much about it.

It apparently is easier for us to honor valor when exhibited in self-defense, but we find ourselves reluctant to honor killing the enemy when we are the aggressor in a military setting.

Bullsqueeze, you clueless popinjay.

When SSG Jared Monti died trying to rescue a fellow soldier he was a part of an attacking force. Same with SSG Miller. SEAL Lt. Michael Murphy was on an extended patrol in Taliban territory trying to root them out and kill them when he earned his MOH. And I've told you about Paul Ray Smith.

So:

By my rough count, about 25% of the Medals of Honor during the Vietnam War were granted to soldiers who showed unusual bravery and courage in assertive military action against the enemy. So far, according to Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal, we have yet to do so even once in our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Surely there have been exceptional acts of bravery of those kinds in these wars, and yet we have failed to grant our highest honor for gallantry to any of them.

By my rough count - and I could be undercounting - 50% of those given in Iraq and Afghanistan have been "granted" to soldiers who showed unusual bravery in “assertive military action against the enemy”. Again Mr. Fischer, your problem is ignorance.  You either don’t know or can't figure out the difference between warfare in Vietnam and in Afghanistan or Iraq.

In Vietnam there were certainly any number of fire fights in which small forces faced each other, but it was also a war of battalions and regiments. Vast numbers of opposing forces pounded each other for days in any number of battles. Review the battle of the Ia Drang valley, Hue, any number of battles along the DMZ, A shau valley, etc.  In the latter years it often resembled conventional warfare at times.

Other than the opening gambit in Iraq, the wars in both there and Afghanistan have been wars with shadows.  Mostly brief firefights with rare extended battles. Every now and then a large group will oppose our warriors – but primarily it is the war that Sal Giunta faced that day when he aggressively attacked those who had just attacked he and his squad.  A squad that was out looking for the bad guys – a squad that was taking the war to them.

We call that “attacking” in these wars, or, in fact, any freakin’ war.

By the way, here’s all McGurn said about that and it  doesn’t support Fischer’s supposed thesis or “trend” even slightly:

What kind of man is that? When we think of military heroism, we may think of Rambos decorated for great damage inflicted on the enemy. In fact, the opposite is true. Every Medal of Honor from these wars has been for an effort to save life. Even more telling, each specifically recognizes bravery that cannot be commanded.

Dilbert takes the bit about Rambos and the fact that those awarded the most recent MOHs were trying to save lives and turns it into some sort of “trend” and “feminization” of the medal.  McGurn’s piece was brilliant and well said (and I owe him an apology if I implied his piece was anything other than that). 

The Yahoo of the Year, however, manages to completely misinterpret what McGurn says and turn it into something insulting, pejorative and frankly, pathetic.  In fact he so badly mangles the meaning of McGurn’s paragraph that it makes you wonder if perhaps English is a second language and barring that, perhaps he rode the short bus most of his life.

The guy who charges the bunker and knocks out the machine gun doesn’t do it because he’s some bad ass killing machine, Mr. Fischer.  He does it because he’s a combat infantryman who holds the lives of his fellow squad members higher than he does his own.  He’d rather take a bullet and die than not try to save them – and if that means charging a machine gun with little chance of survival, well, as you’ve seen if you actually read the citations you claim to have read, they do it with incredible regularity.  Instead of denigrating the process you ought to be thanking God for such men.

It’s clear it is a bond and a brotherhood you’ll never understand.  And that lack of understanding and your pompous and arrogant blathering about things of which you know nothing are what have caused the “vituperative” reaction to your stupid first post.  And yes, that’s the proper word for it.  It was stupid.  It lacked even the most common insight or intelligence.  I lacked research.  It lacked knowledge of the subject.  You are a non-swimmer in the deep end without your water wings.  And, for some reason, false pride I guess, you have chosen to remain there floundering around and making a spectacle of yourself.

Well let me lay it out for you as plainly as I can – as long as you choose to address this subject, I will continue to call your hand and point out what a clueless jerk you are.  As long as you try to denigrate selection process, the Medal of Honor or its recipients, I will return the favor.

And since 7 of those who have received the Medal of Honor in Afghanistan and Iraq aren’t here to do it themselves, that only seems fair.