That is News that should make front pages instead of phoney celebrities.
I'm not disagreeing.
One of the problems is that in many cases, the people who receive these medals are not like celebrities. Celebrities love the limelight and are very good at getting it, either by being very good at what they do or by having very good PR and marketing instincts or by hiring other people who do have those instincts -- otherwise they wouldn't be celebrities.
From my experience, many of the people who have received bronze stars, silver stars or other military decorations -- even those at Fort Leonard Wood who know me personally -- are extremely uncomfortable even being perceived as seeking the spotlight. There's more than a few people around here who I've known for years, but who I first found out about their being bronze star or silver star recipients when I happened to notice the license plate on their car, or met them in a Class A uniform or dress blues at a military ball.
Some of those people, when I ask if they'd like to tell me about their experience, politely decline. Others are willing to talk, and I appreciate listening, but their experience involves incidents decades ago that have no news value. Still others give me a blunt "no," or even a "hell no!" and get quite annoyed. Now remember, these people already know me and know I'm not a leftist anti-military reporter, but they still have a visceral reaction against talking about their combat experience to the media.
I respect that. It's their choice.
But the problem with that choice is that it means that for every person who is willing to talk, there are dozens or even hundreds of stories about the actions of servicemen and servicewoman that will never get told to a country that badly needs to hear that we're NOT losing the war in Iraq.
If LBJ had been able to bring combat casualties down to the level we're seeing today, he would have not only won re-election in 1968 but also likely changed the course of world history. For 40 years, enemies of the United States throughout the world have been able to say the way to defeat America is kill a few thousand solders and capture a couple of soldiers as hostages, and American public opinion will force the president to pull out the troops, even if we're killing a hundred enemies for every one of our wounded soldiers.
What's our standard for winning a war?
Do we have to invade a country, terrify its armed forces so completely that they virtually all desert and run home in their underwear leaving not only their guns but also their uniforms behind, kill the president's two heir-apparent sons, capture the president, try him in court and execute him for clearly provable war crimes that shock any civilized human being, put a democratically elected government in place, get much of the half-ruined infrastructure back online, play divide-and-conquer with the insurgents so the nationalists and tribal leaders turn against the foreign religious fundamentalist fighters, and drive most of the insurgents out of the country, all while losing about 4,000 people in about seven years of warfare?
If that's our standard for winning, it's clearly unreasonable. Most counter-insurgency operations take decades to win, not years, and end with the insurgents getting co-opted into the political process rather than being destroyed.
Oh, but I forgot -- WE DID ALL THAT!!! But our media and the American public seem to think we're actually losing despite accomplishing all that.
If you're a military veteran, just remember that the next time somebody asks you to speak about your military experience. I don't mean a reporter -- I mean a high school teacher, a friend, a social group that's not made up mostly of fellow veterans.
If you choose not to talk, I do respect your choice and and will continue to respect it. It's a choice only you can make. But in a country where overwhelming majorities know nothing about the military, it's a choice which is giving up your opportunity to show some sincerely curious people what you did to help retain the freedoms that they and you both value.
One or two stories not being told is not a big deal. But when not just many but actually most of the stories don't get told because of modesty and a desire to shun the limelight, it becomes a problem for the country and for the military.
