Sgt. First Class Jared C. Monti was awarded the Medal of Honor on Thursday for his heroism in Afghanistan: He died three years ago, on June 21, 2006, while trying to save one of his soldiers during a gunfire near the Pakistan border. “They remind us all that the price of freedom is great,” President Barack Obama said at a ceremony in the White House. Deep down in The New York Times article – in the second-to-last paragraph -- is a line that says that he was the “first Army soldier to be awarded the distinction from the Afghanistan war.”
The Army is big on ceremonies: There are induction ceremonies,re-enlistment ceremonies, promotional ceremonies, and, of course, theheart-breaking military funeral with its final roll call. And yet inthe Iraq war, the protocol slipped. “There have been reports of peoplegetting [medals] in the mail, which doesn't sound like the way thatyou would do it,” Rep. Jo Ann Davis, a Republican from Virginia, said at a hearing before a military-personnel subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee in December 2006. Most of the troops who fought in Iraq – and certainly after the ill-fated attempts to turn Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman into heroes – did not get the kind of attention that they deserve, or that they would have gotten in the past. Army officials shied away from stories of individual heroism after the public-relations disasters after the Lynch's capture and the Tillman's death. And overall, the number of medals that have been awarded in both wars has been limited, and when they have been given out, they were often not presented in a ceremony at all. It has been much more common for soldiers, whether on active duty in the Army or serving in the National Guard, to receive nothing at all, regardless of how they performed under fire.
In previous conflicts, military officials were more generous.Indeed, if you were involved in the 1983 invasion ofGrenada -- even in a peripheral way -- the odds were pretty great that you would receive a medal.During that conflict, 8,600 decorations were awarded – thoughonly 7,200 troops ever made it to the island. “It's known as theJunior Olympics of medals,” a U.S. Army colonel tells me. During theBush administration, officials tried to pretend there was not really awar going on – and the medals tended to draw attention to it. Criticsof the military say that the Army responded by giving out fewermedals. Monti deserved his medal and was justly recognized in a WhiteHouse ceremony. Many other men and women who have fought in Iraq andAfghanistan do, too, and they are still waiting for theirs.
--TaraMcKelvey
