Not a Hero

In recent years, the Medal of Honor has been awarded posthumously to war veterans who have given their lives in the service of their country, with three medals awarded during Obama's presidency.  This changed the other day...

No, I don't mean the presidency, I meant him giving the Medal of Honor to dead guys.  You silly gooses...

Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta distinguished himself in combat on October 25, 2007, when his rifle team was ambushed by Afghan insurgents.  Giunta rushed into the area of enemy fire to back up his comrades, and at one point caught up with a pair of Taliban members who were taking away one of his friends, Sgt. Josh Brennan.  Giunta killed one of the Taliban abductors and wounded the other before carrying Brennan away from the enemy.

He literally rushed into no-man's land and into gunfire to save a comrade.  What have you done for your friends lately?

Brennan had already sustained life-threatening injuries, but Giunta provided first aid long enough for the army medic to arrive.  Brennan later died from his injuries, but the army was at least able to provide a body for Brennan's family to bury, rather than leaving him to them terrorist sumbitches.  I mean, God knows what they would have done with him.

President Obama awarded the Medal of Honor to Giunta.  (*Edit:  The video of the ceremony is embedded below.)  "I like this guy, Sal, and as I found out myself when I first spoke with him on the phone, and when we met in the Oval Office today, he is a low-key guy, a humble guy.  He doesn't seek the limelight, and he'll tell you he didn't do anything special, that he was just doing his job, that any of his brothers in the unit would do the same thing.  In fact, he just lived up to what his team leader instructed him to do years before:  You do everything you can."



In an interview with 60 Minutes, Giunta admitted that he was overwhelmed at the prospect of being called a "hero," and didn't feel it was appropriate.  "The story was told, handshakes were made, and soon I'm talking to the President of the United States.  I don't see how that happened.  [...]  I'm average, I'm mediocre.  This is one moment.  I mean, I don't think I did anything that anyone else I was with wouldn't have done. I was in a position to do it. That's what needed to be done. So that's what I did."

Well, if this guy isn't a hero, I obviously wouldn't know what a hero is.  I don't think anyone could disagree with that...

"When we think of heroism in battle, we used the think of our boys storming the beaches of Normandy under withering fire, climbing the cliffs of Pointe do Hoc while enemy soldiers fired straight down on them, and tossing grenades into pill boxes to take out gun emplacements.  That kind of heroism has apparently become passe when it comes to awarding the Medal of Honor. We now award it only for preventing casualties, not for inflicting them."

Apparently, someone disagrees with me.

Enter Bryan Fischer, the head of the American Family Association, who commented on his blog that awarding the Medal of Honor to those who save lives instead of killing the enemy may result in "feminizing" the Medal of Honor.  He goes on to ask, "When are we going to start awarding the Medal of Honor once again for soldiers who kill people and break things so our families can sleep safely at night?"

The fuck?

Bryan Fischer goes on to admit that such self-sacrifice is noble, but also useless if it is not enough to destroy the enemy.  "Jesus’ act of self-sacrifice would ultimately have been meaningless - yes, meaningless - if he had not inflicted a mortal wound on the enemy while giving up his own life."  Quoting the Bible itself, he further adds, "It was on the cross that he crushed the head of the serpent. It was on the cross that 'he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in it'."

Okay, fine.  I'm not going to debate whether or not terrorist sumbitches are terrorist sumbitches at this point.  Nazis are Nazis, "the enemy" is the enemy, and terrorist sumbitches are terrorist sumbitches.  If they are truly out to threaten us, we must put a stop to their monstrous acts against humanity by any means necessary, even if this means killing them.

But what kind of warped mind questions the bravery of storming into enemy fire to save a friend's life?  How does anyone drag their feet at the thought of awarding a medal to such an example of conspicuous bravery and valor?

I think the guy is simply living in a different time, back in a time with the good ol' boys, in Fischer's words, "storming the beaches of Normandy under withering fire, climbing the cliffs of Pointe do Hoc while enemy soldiers fired straight down on them, and tossing grenades into pill boxes to take out gun emplacements." 

Which is great and all, except not every enemy is the Third Reich (or Satan, for that matter), and not all problems can be solved by throwing more grenades at it.  What Fischer forgets is that America is on a peacekeeping mission, to restore order to the Middle East.  This does not entail responding to force with more force.  The ideal war he has in mind is the equivalent of a ballistic missile destroying everything in its path, when what we need is a "smart bomb" approach, tailored to surgically remove the enemy, and only the enemy.

Oh, and Fischer?  Jesus saves.  He saves everyone.  Including "the enemy."  Just as one soldier, back in '07, who was anything but a "hero," saved the life of his friend.