A leading proponent in the effort to review military valor awards said the Pentagon’s plans to fix the system don’t go far enough to recognize the heroism displayed by troops in combat.
The memo’s recommendations, which are the result of a year-long review of the military award system, aim to speed up how quickly troops receive their valor awards. Under the new guidelines, expected to be signed by the defense secretary this week, nominations must be submitted within 45 days of an action and medals for valor must be awarded within a year.
But Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., said there’s no reason for the “bureaucratic morass” that often means troops are getting their awards in the mail years after getting out of the military. For the Silver Star and below, Hunter said commanders should be able to present medals to their troops within about a week without any review by the Pentagon.
“We trust these commanders with our young people’s lives, but they’re not allowed to give them that award the next day,” Hunter told the Washington Examiner.
“That’s a huge deal. If you pin a Silver Star on one of your men who did something crazy in front of his or her peers, that’s awesome and it never happens anymore,” said the former Marine who served three combat tours overseas.
As part of the Pentagon’s review, officials met with about 750 active-duty, reserve and National Guard troops who had served in combat in order to get their input. One of their key concerns was the timeliness of medals being awarded, as well as preserving the integrity of the Bronze Star and Purple Heart, a defense official said.
Hunter has been an advocate on Capitol Hill for those whose awards have been downgraded, most recently raising the case of Army Sgt. 1st Class Earl Plumlee, who received a Silver Star despite his recommendation for the Medal of Honor.
Hunter sent a letter in May to Defense Secretary Ash Carter asking for an explanation as to why Plumlee’s award was downgraded. The case is under investigation by the Defense Department inspector general, according to documents provided by Hunter’s office.
Plumlee’s case will be among those reviewed by the services under a new Pentagon requirement to look at all service crosses and Silver Stars awarded since Sept. 11, 2001, after officials discovered an unusually low trend in awarding the Medal of Honor, the nation’s top military award. The service crosses and Silver Star are the second and third highest awards for valor, respectively.
Defense officials said about 1,100 cases need to be reviewed.
Hunter said this review is “long overdue,” but said that it shouldn’t just include the most prestigious of the valor awards. Instead, he said the military should also review valor awards from the Bronze Star down after it finishes with the top tier.
“They have to look at the top stuff first, since there are way fewer of those. They are going to have tens of thousands of other awards that were downgraded over time that they’re going to have to look at, too,” Hunter said. “But what this shows is it’s a systemic problem, not a one-off issue … it shows that the whole system is broken.”
The president has awarded 17 Medals of Honor to those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, with four of those coming from the Iraq war. Seven, including all of those awarded from actions in Iraq, were awarded posthumously.
The review of awards is set to be completed by September 2017. Any cases found to deserve an upgrade to the Medal of Honor where the action occurred more than five years ago will need to receive a waiver of the statutory time limit from Congress.
A defense official stressed that the review found no indication that any medals were awarded inappropriately or that any specific cases deserved a second look.
The Pentagon memo also includes the creation of a “C” device to denote actions in combat and an “R” device for those who influence combat but are not in direct danger, such as drone pilots.
