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Lawmaker wants Medal of Honor review

A California congressman who served two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan convinced the House Armed Services Committee to order a full review of the criteria used for giving awards for gallantry and valor after a senior defense official said technological advancements and new combat tactics might be the reason fewer of the highest medals are being issued.

At the urging of Rep. Duncan D. Hunter, R-Calif., a Marine combat veteran elected to Congress in November, the armed services committee has asked for a review of trends in awarding the Medal of Honor to determine if the low number of awards in the current wars is the result of “inadvertent subjective bias amongst commanders.”

The committee also wants the Defense Department to survey officers and noncommissioned officers in leadership positions to look at attitudes about acts of valor. Hunter is looking for the reasons behind not just fewer nominations, but also a trend since the Vietnam War in which the only Medal of Honor awards have been for people who died during an act of valor.

He hopes the review and study, approved by voice vote during debate on the 2010 defense authorization bill, lead to an overhaul of defense and service guidance.

Hunter has been pressing the Defense Department for a review since a nomination for the Medal of Honor for Marine Sgt. Rafael Peralta was downgraded to a Navy Cross. Peralta died as he smothered a grenade in Iraq in an act that saved lives — the same act that resulted in some veterans receiving Medals of Honor in the past.

In a June 2 letter to Hunter that was released Wednesday, Gail McGinn, acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said defense officials see nothing amiss in the Peralta decision.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who made the final call, “was advised by five independent reviewers who all individually concluded that the evidence included in the [Medal of Honor] recommendation did not support the award,” McGinn wrote.

The reviewers included a former commanding general of Marine forces in Iraq, a neurosurgeon, two pathologists and a Medal of Honor recipient, McGinn said.

Her letter also responds to Hunter’s larger question about whether the criteria have changed over time. A 2008 review of guidance used in making the awards “found no evidence of a posthumous requirement, either written or unwritten,” she said.

What has changed, McGinn said, is warfare. U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq “are inherently different from previous major conflicts,” she said.

“The conduct of warfare has evolved significantly in the 30 years since the end of the Vietnam conflict,” she said. “Technological advancements have dramatically changed battlefield tactics, techniques and procedures. Precision-guided stand-off weapons allow our forces to destroy known enemy positions with reduced personal risk.”

Another factor, she said, is that the two modern conflicts involve adversaries who use tactics like remotely detonated explosive devices, rockets, mortar and sniper attacks — all of which reduce face-to-face engagements.

Hunter isn’t fighting alone. Fellow Iraq war veteran Rep. Patrick Murphy, D-Pa., another armed services committee member, said he also thinks something is wrong if the Medal of Honor is being given only posthumously. “If this trend continues, we will have no more living heroes,” Murphy said.

The order for the study and survey are included in the report accompanying the defense bill, HR 2647, which the armed services committee approved early Wednesday after an all-day and all-night marathon session.

The bill calls for the study and report on the Medal of Honor process to be delivered to Congress by March 31.

DISCUSS: The review