Medals for murder?

Purple Heart (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

On Wednesday it was announced that the Distinguished Warfare medal was being created. What do you have to do to earn said new medal? Just play on a Department of Defense computer really. Now it might sound like a medal for fighting what with the word warfare being in the title but really, if you’re sitting in an office staring at a computer you’re not doing a lot of real warfare. This new medal would outrank the Purple Heart which is awarded to service personal injured in the line of duty. To me that seems like a bit of a slap in the face to all those men and women who put their lives on the line. I know a medal isn’t the reason they do it but if your going to have medals and rank them I would think the cyber medal wouldn’t come so high up the rankings. If I was a solider who got shot in the ass and got a purple heart I’d be pretty pissed to think some tool on a computer is being valued more highly than me for fondling his joystick for a few hours a day. Sure sure the drones and the robots and cyber warfare maybe the way of the future but right now there are still real soldiers and real people putting their lives on the line, this is a fairly shoddy way to repay them. I think I have to agree with those people who view drone operators as a glorified video gamers. Sitting in a room watching a monochrome screen then shooting hell-fire missiles at anyone who moves is not what I’d call terribly worthy of a medal. There are plenty of problems with drone warfare, for one don’t try to tell me the guy controlling the drone has any idea who he’s shooting at. If all they have is video feed from thousands of feet in the air there is no way of identifying your target properly. This is fairly clear since every other week we hear about a drone strike gone wrong in Pakistan or Afghanistan where some faceless, irresponsible drone operator has destroyed an innocent family. If it were men on the ground that killed a family there would certainly be consequences but there don’t seem to be any for the guys piloting the flying death machines when they screw up. The other thing this medal will be award for is cyber warfare, which is just fancy talk for hackers basically. In the real world hackers are criminals and a pain in the ass who want to steal your credit card info, but if the government is employing them they get a medal? When robots do all the fighting sure give medals whoever you like, no ones at risk, everyone can have a medal and feel special. But for now when real people are doing the dirty work, and living with the consequences (post traumatic stress anyone?), they’re the ones who deserve the respect and reward. This new medal seems a little stupid to me.