Tom, the portion of Major Smith's comments that you quoted didn't do justice to all of the points that he made. He also said, "Overall, I think we are too stingy with our medals for this environment. I feel many of the soldiers I have commanded and served near have displayed equal courage and tenacity as their forebears, but have received less recognition."

I once had dinner with a crusty old Navy captain stationed at CincLant and heading that command's awards board. He called the medals 'bongs' (one guesses from the sound they might make and not what might be smoked with them...). I was surprised at how cynical he was of the whole process: 'The closer you get, the uglier it looks.'

The military has always had medal-hounds. Some Services award at a much higher rate than others for the same actions and performance. The effective criteria for making awards vary greatly in time. Some Service leaders and commanders of major commands are very stringent; others seek the maximum number of awards for their people. And the usual case has no one is happy with the process.

The Service solution that seems to work is stringent attention to the process at the major command and Service level and a serious pursuit of a conservative balance in the process. Navy does it pretty well. Ditto USMC. My Favorite Army has always had trouble with this. Not calibrated to speak of Air Force, though I think there are still enough pilots in charge there to keep it relatively honest.

But here's the problem: in today's game, COIN as it should be practiced much exacerbates the awards problem. Success in counter-insurgency should be measured by how few firefights occur in the pursuit of the main objective, how little 'kinetic' exchange is created. That's at the opposite end of the curve from those actions for which awards are commonly given. Perfect example: Odierno One, he who led in the invasion of Baghdad, is the sort of guy the system would richly reward with bongs. Odierno Two, the guy who (after his brain transplant) is pushing COIN strategy and tactics, he would not be well awarded.

One wishes this was the only problem My Favorite Army is facing. But as said by me often here, it's a mess overall and in many details. The awards confusion is a symptom of the overall unsorted nature of the Army. Were it just Army, who cares. But this is our nation's Army and for our sake, not the Service's itself, we really need to see it get its act together both in how it handles today's wars and how it postures itself for the future. There's a deep dark secret embedded in the extended history of our two wars: the United States Army is a mess.

Reminds me of this bit of military humor.

Definition: CAB Chaser...

http://www.bouhammer.com/2009/09/bob-on-the-fob-cab-chaser/

Pete,

the problem, again, is that we're too stingy on medals for the junior enlisted, yet too liberal with medals for officers and senior NCOs.

Why is it that LTCs rate a BSM at end of tour? Why is it that most MAJs get an MSM at end of tour? Why is it that junior enlisted rarely break the ARCOM medal-ceiling?

Napoleon said soldiers fight for medals. He meant the rank and file, not the officers. If an officer has to do what's necessary for a valor award, the commander should be called to task, for allowing the situation to have deteriorated so the officer has to exhibit courage beyond the call of duty.

If an officer gets a valor award, it's usually because someone in the chain f***'d up the mission.

Well, to raise an old topic look at the uniform of Petraeus or McChrystal and contrast it with that of Ike or Marshall. After that look ponder the differences in their respective responsibilities and results. The first have led a rather confused assemblage in a stalemated series of small half-wars in south Asia and the latter led a multi-million man grand international coalition against the most professional and awesome military force of the twentieth century and won.

Some really good comments here. No question that Petraeus looks like a banana republic general or perhaps someone from the old Warsaw Pact. I think the only thing he's missing is Hero of the Soviet Union. And I'm with JPWREL: it's pretty hard to even mention Petraeus and McChrystal in the same breath as Marshall and Eisenhower. Tell me again what these medal-bedecked generals have done for the nation? The wars they've seen? The valor and sterling leadership they demonstrated as more junior officers in combat? The major formations they've adeptly directed as senior officers? You know, those wars?

Reality is that if you're going to do COIN, you need to recognize that it's a small unit commander's activity and that, pursued properly, you're not going to see many casualties or much valor. That's the good news, if you think not killing people is good news. It's also the bad news, if you're a medal hound.

Given the nature of these "wars" and the relatively few casualties (by war standards), there don't seem to be many opportunities to earn valor awards. "Being there" awards, which is what we Vietnam guys called 'em, might be the best thing available, which means maybe someone should think about how many of them there are and how many are given out. Thinking of the criminal specialist Graner with four rows of ribbons, it seems as if the entire military has adopted the philosophy of the USAF. Back in the day, I recall seeing four-stripers in the USAF who'd never been out of the U.S. with more ribbons than two-tour Vietnam Army and Marine guys.

You know, the Brits and the French didn't give out a whole lot of medals to their colonial forces. Maybe we should start thinking about that.

From JTINSC: "And I'm with JPWREL: it's pretty hard to even mention Petraeus and McChrystal in the same breath as Marshall and Eisenhower. Tell me again what these medal-bedecked generals have done for the nation? The wars they've seen? The valor and sterling leadership they demonstrated as more junior officers in combat? The major formations they've adeptly directed as senior officers? You know, those wars?"

I think if we lined up these questions for each General officer named, we'd get some interesting results. Looking at Marshall and Eisenhower, today, would we trust our strategic and campaign level leadership to officers more known for their performance in staff billets, rather than command billets? (and maybe we should)
Neither officer was know for demonstrating valor or sterling leadership in combat as junior officers. Neither officer reallly ever adeptly directed major formations--Ike managed a theater.
My point is that comparisons like this are interesting, but not really relevant. The challenges are different and each leader is worthy of study in his own context.

Maj Smith, here is the original passage..."I must say that the military system of awards and promotions was rigged in favor of the warriors. Medals were given on the basis of valor in combat. If there was no combat because the local commander had succeeded in pacifying his area, too bad for him no medal. It was no doubt much easier to assess the efficiency of an officer by glancing
at the “score” (how many rebels killed or captured? how many weapons
seized?) than by making an estimate of the support he received from
the population; what criteria was one to use in this case?"
David Galula, Pacification in Algeria 1956-1958, RAND 2006 (first published 1963), chpt 3. Struggle for Control of the Population

The award system has always been weakly and inequitably aligned with actual mission goals. It rewards getting into a fight much more than having avoided the fight altogether. Too much attention is given to the rank of the awardee in determining the level of award. This denies appropriate recognition to less senior personnel who still make significant contributions. I've seen awards rejected by the approving authority because "that's too big an award for that paygrade" or because recognizing the individual would exceed an arbitrary quota of how many awards can be given. Then there's the differences that exist between warfare communities and services on how readily they give awards.

The consequence of the biases is felt when it's time for promotion and the soldier with the silver star or bronze star with the V seems like he's more exceptional than his contemporaries who do not have those awards. This along with other vagaries of the evaluation process used by the services contributes to the promotion of personnel who are not the best suited to lead in today's armed forces. A navy survey from a few years ago reported that >80% of officers do not believe the promotion process promotes the best officers.

What worst about the way this system works is that it undermines the credibility of awards and leads personnel to view them with cynicism.

Every service chief needs to soak their respective awards manuals in gasoline and set them afire. Construct a new system that only awards ribbon/medals for campaigns, expeditions, special deployments, and valor. Get rid of the CIB and combat action ribbon - the amount of time spent processing-verifying these "awards" is a crime. Unfortunately, after 7 years of Iraq and Afghanistan, Army and Marine field grades must have at the very least a bronze star with V and a CIB/CAR to have a shot at colonel. Thus, the machine cannot be stopped. The twisted logic of the current system is that there are SNCO's and officers with 20+ ribbons, medals on their uniform and a number of them have never heard a shot fired in anger.