An interesting and thought provoking article in the NYT today about the decline in Medal of Honor Recipients in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

From the article:

Despite its symbolic importance and educational role in military culture, the Medal of Honor has been awarded only six times for service in Iraq or Afghanistan. By contrast, 464 Medals of Honor were awarded for service during World War II, 133 during the Korean War and 246 during the Vietnam War. “From World War I through Vietnam,” The Army Times claimed in April 2009, “the rate of Medal of Honor recipients per 100,000 service members stayed between 2.3 (Korea) and 2.9 (World War II). But since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, only five Medals of Honor have been awarded, a rate of 0.1 per 100,000 — one in a million.”

Pentagon officials claim that the nature of warfare has changed, from firefights to IEDs and that has provided less opportunities for valor. Of course, vets of both wars disagree noting that they have seen valor that would have easily won a MOH, but have not.

It is an interesting debate, are today's soldiers less heroic than previous generations or are they just getting buried in the Pentagon's bureaucracy? Should more MOH be given out, or are the current numbers correct? Would giving more MOH devalue the award in any way?

I lean towards that this generation is just as heroic as the previous ones and that more stories of valor and heroism need to be explored and more medals given. There are great men and women dieing for this country and they should be honored for it, not diminished.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/magazine/30medals-t.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=all

i think i have to agree that the type of warfare has changed. and i would say the majority of the time, enemy contact is pretty much one sided. for example when an IED goes off, there isnt always small arms fire to continue the attack. and for our side, we do more capturing of insurgents than we do killing of them.

from reading the story, i can understand why he might not have been given the Medal of Honor. i would assume there was an investigation and interviews of the Marines there to determine whether or not he actually pulled the grenade under him etc.

i have written a few awards/medals for Soldiers(nothing very high) but to me it always seemed like you needed to be a lawyer to interpret some of the language used to understand the difference between 2 medals.

I agree with the Pentagon, we haven't had too many "battles" in the traditional sense. Fallujah was one of several exceptions, but the enemy is smart enough to avoid us so the opportunities for supreme valor are considerably fewer.