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" I hope this won&amp;#039;t be taken as a slap at our troops, but I&amp;#039;m rather old-fashioned in my belief that combat military citations are best earned on the battlefield. I&amp;#039;m not convinced that you should get a medal for what you did in Waziristan from your cubicle in Kansas City or Langley. But here we are anyway. They fight the war from computer consoles and video screens. But the troops that launch the drone strikes and direct the cyberattacks that can kill or disable an enemy may never set foot in the combat zone. Now their battlefield contributions may be recognized. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced Wednesday that for the first time the Pentagon is creating a medal that can be awarded to troops who have a direct impact on combat operations, but do it from afar. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve seen firsthand how modern tools, like remotely piloted platforms and cyber systems, have changed the way wars are fought,&amp;quot; Panetta said. &amp;quot;And they&amp;#039;ve given our men and women the ability to engage the enemy and change the course of battle, even from afar.&amp;quot; The drone war is savage, and it is impersonal, and the legal justifications for it are as threadbare as you can get without citing the constitutional doctrine of, &amp;quot;Because I said so, that&amp;#039;s why.&amp;quot; But it also is a dangerous way to remove from us all the consequences of being at war. Even before the killer death robots began to fly, there was a lot of hand-wringing \u2014 much of it justified \u2014 that, because our wars were now being fought by volunteers, the country as a whole had less involvement in what was being done in its name than it ever had before. This concern ignore the fact that our policymakers created this phenomenon deliberately, and then used it for their own purposes. This was whence sprung the cult of The Troops, which made sure that we heard &amp;quot;God Bless America&amp;quot; at every ballgame, but also allowed our politicians to send soldiers into battle without proper equipment, and to nickel-and-dime them when they came home. (That the cult also helped de-fang any serious antiwar movement was considered a bonus by the dishonest men who planned the wars.) Within the government, though, it was even worse. The Iraq War was planned in secret, long before the attacks of September 11. The phony rationales were concocted far beyond the reach of congressional oversight or public scrutiny. The drone program is a logical outgrowth of this ongoing contempt for the public&amp;#039;s right to know what is being done in its name. The creation of a form of warfare in which the combatants are a continent removed from the people they&amp;#039;re fighting, and at no danger to themselves unless they slip in the parking lot on the way to their cars, is a logical outgrowth of the ongoing attempt to sanitize warfare for the home front. We have distanced the people from the decision to go to war, and now we are distancing them further from the actual fighting. This is not the way democracies are supposed to go to war, but this has been increasingly the way that this democracy has gone to war.  And now, it appears, having labored to justify its clean and antiseptic new form of warfare, the people running it are going to sanctify it with a medal that will rank &amp;quot;a bit higher than the Bronze Star&amp;quot; on the scale of military accessorization. These, by the way, are the official Defense Department qualifications for being awarded a Bronze Star: The Bronze Star Medal is awarded to any person who, while serving in any capacity in or with the Army of the United States after 6 December 1941, distinguished himself or herself by heroic or meritorious achievement or service, not involving participation in aerial flight, in connection with military operations against an armed enemy; or while engaged in military operations involving conflict with an opposing armed force in which the United States is not a belligerent party. Here&amp;#039;s a list of people who were awarded the Bronze Star in World War II. Let&amp;#039;s just open one entry at random. Audie L. Murphy, 01 692 509, First Lieutenant (then Staff Sergeant), Infantry, Company &amp;quot;B&amp;quot;, 15th Infantry Regiment. For valorous conduct in action against the enemy. On the night of 2 March 1944, on the ANZIO BEACHHEAD in Italy, First Lieutenant MURPHY crept 100 yards over flat, open terrain during a fire fight between his small patrol and a group of Germans, to a point 50 yards from a partly disabled enemy tank. Taking careful aim, he fired several rifle grenades at the tank, hitting and completely destroying it. Then, when a great many enemy machine guns in the sector opened up, he led his men through bullet swept area to safety. Here&amp;#039;s a list of people who were awarded the Bronze Star in Vietnam. Let&amp;#039;s just open one entry at random. On this date, Lieutenant Carey was serving as the platoon leader with his mortar platoon at Phouc Hoa II. At approximately 2300 hours, the friendly compound was suddenly subjected to small arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire from an attacking enemy ground unit. Disregarding his personal safety, Lieutenant Carey exposed himself to the hostile fire raking the area in order to direct the firing of mortar illumination for the friendly compound. Continuing to risk his life, he maneuvered to the perimeter of the camp. After Lieutenant Carey had insured that all of the positions were secure, he personally secured a machine gun and placed devastating suppressive fire upon the aggressors. These men, and thousands more men and women like them, will now have their medals ranked by an award given to someone manipulating a joystick thousands of miles from the people on whom that person is making war. We are trying to change war by preventing war from changing us. That will never work. Hanging a medal on the effort won&amp;#039;t make it so. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a17490/the-drone-war-medal/>