Analysts and troops are divided over whether the Pentagon should reconsider standards for valor awards amid a new kind of war where the front lines blend into the world around us, such as the attempted gun attack on a Paris-bound train last week.
Specialist Aleksander Skarlatos of the Oregon National Guard and Airman 1st Class Spencer Stone will both receive their respective services’ highest honor for “heroism not involving actual conflict with an enemy,” according to an Army release.
But the two service members, who last week tackled and tied up a heavily-armed gunman on a Paris-bound train, are not eligible for a valor award such as the Bronze Star, which is only awarded to troops for valor heroism in combat.
That is a mistake, said Chris Harmer, a former Navy officer and senior naval analyst with the Middle East Security Project at the Institute for the Study of War.
“They were in hand-to-hand combat with a terrorist, and their quick and brave action prevented a massacre. I think that is worthy of a Bronze Star,” Harmer said.
The current criteria for a Bronze Star with “V” is for a service member to have “distinguished himself by heroic or meritorious achievement or service, not involving participation in aerial flight, in connection with military operations against an armed enemy,” according to a Defense Department fact sheet.
Skarlatos’ Soldier’s Medal citation says he charged the armed gunman after hearing shots, “forcefully” wrestled two firearms away from the attacker and knocked him unconscious with the blunt end of a rifle before tying him up with makeshift restraints.
“Specialist Skarlatos distinguished himself in a courageous manner, voluntarily accepting risk to his own life,” the citation says. His “brave actions prevented a potentially catastrophic loss of life.”
One of the biggest issues in awarding combat valor medals to troops who step up in attacks like the one in Paris is where the battlefield ends, an ambiguous definition in today’s landscape. While there are some defined battlefields, like terrorist strongholds in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya and surrounding waters, U.S. troops largely face threats that can crop up from extremists all over the world, Harmer said.
“Today’s military personnel face an enemy that is dispersed geographically and chronologically like never before,” Harmer said. “More than ever, [the Islamic State] and its followers are seeking to redefine the battlefield in a way that America has never faced before.”
Butch Bracknell, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel, said the military defines “the entire world as a battlefield” in the Joint Concept for Irregular Warfare, updated in 2010. This changing nature of warfare, therefore, requires the standards for awards to be reviewed, he said.
“The awards system is based on a 20th century 3rd generation warfare construct where you could actually identify a battlefield and a uniformed adversary,” Bracknell, who was an attorney in the Marines, told the Washington Examiner in an email.
Today’s threats, however, often come from lone-wolf extremists whose violence is not confined to a particular time or place.
“When terrorists are conducting asymmetric attacks against people everywhere, and a service member is wounded or demonstrates heroism, why on earth not? What if a Russian tank battalion attacked that train in Poland? What’s the real difference?” Bracknell said.
Chris Morey, a former Marine Corps sergeant, however, said the troops on the Paris-bound train were not singled out and attacked because they were members of the military. While that doesn’t take away from their heroism in stopping a potentially deadly situation, it also shouldn’t make them eligible for awards earned by troops who are being shot at, he said.
“They just happened to be in a bad place at a bad time and were somehow able to react as admirably as any of us can aspire to,” said Morey, who did three tours in Iraq and was involved in a roadside bomb blast. “In my mind, attacks that are intentionally targeting military members would have to increase significantly before considering the world as a battlefield.”
Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said he was not aware of any talks within the Pentagon to look specifically at rewriting awards criteria.
Any potential change to widen award criteria would likely draw criticism from troops who served under stricter regulations, Harmer said. Service members recently criticized a new ribbon sailors will get just for graduating boot camp, and both lawmakers and troops were angered over the Pentagon’s announcement of a new medal for drone operators in 2013.
Skarlatos and Stone, as well as their friend Anthony Sadler, received the Legion of Honor, France’s highest recognition, from French President Francois Hollande in a ceremony this week for halting the attack.
French authorities have officially launched a terrorism investigation into the attempted attack after they discovered the gunman watched a radical Islamic video on his phone minutes before the shooting. Gen. Mark Welsh, chief of staff of the Air Force, said Stone, who was injured in the attack, could receive a Purple Heart for the incident if it is determined to be terrorism, citing precedent from the 2009 shooting at Fort Hood, Texas.
Victims of the 2009 shooting at Fort Hood received the Purple Heart this year, as did those who were killed in the 2009 shooting at an Arkansas recruiting center, though awarding the medals took years of fighting in Congress.
“Our nation continues to be engaged in the Global War on Terrorism and our servicemembers are subject to attacks both at home and abroad,” Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., said in a statement on Wednesday. “If a service member, on or off-duty, is wounded in a terrorist attack or commits a valorous act while resisting one, the military should have the ability to consider the facts and circumstances and award an appropriate medal.”
Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said last month that Congress should look at developing a new standard for domestic attacks so service secretaries can make awards based on those criteria, not on a case-by-case basis.
“I think we should probably step back and make a determination not incident-by-incident but general authority to the secretary of the service to make awards, give them some criteria,” the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee said, according to The Washington Times.
While medals like the Purple Heart don’t automatically cover attacks outside of traditional battlefields, they also aren’t awarded to service members who develop post-traumatic stress disorder, one of the signature injuries of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, due to serving in combat.
