Only in Obama’s world:

Only in Obama’s world: A medal for keyboard heroes President Barack Hussein Obama is not gutting the U.S. military, he’s working at making it irrelevant. In public Obama professes an admiration for US troops, bestowing medals of bravery on them in media-blitzed photo ops. Wife Michelle plays a role in the public display carried by media propaganda that crows “The Obamas love the US military”. But behind the scenes, Obama, the Artful Dodger of Modern Times, lobs bombs at the US military without running the risk he’ll ever be caught tossing. The never-ending Marxist strategy the cunning Obama uses against the military should be called his two-step tango. It’s a toss-and-duck operation played out from the convenient safety of afar. In an era where volunteer soldiers are sent into an arena where the enemy is better protected than them by a government who doesn’t believe in them; in which returning veterans are DHS-categorized as terrorists and where media portrayals depict a majority of soldiers as victims of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), the Pentagon is creating a medal awarded to newly-morphed troops—faceless drone strike launchers sitting safe from all harm behind computer screens. “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.” (NBC News, Feb. 13, 2013). In other words, medals for the conveniently safe with no skin in the game. “I’ve seen firsthand how modern tools, like remotely piloted platforms and cyber systems, have changed the way wars are fought,” Panetta crowed. “And they’ve given our men and women the ability to engage the enemy and change the course of battle, even from afar.” Were these same heroes on coffee break during the long hours it took for the murder of four Americans in Benghazi, Mr. Panetta? Impossible to argue that no courage is needed when ‘cyber soldiers’ are physically removed from the fight. At the risk of nauseating readers, this is the description of the new Warfare Medal to be awarded for “extraordinary achievement” related to a military operation that occurred after Sept. 11, 2001, which unlike other combat medals, do not require the recipient to risk his or her life to get: “blue, red and white-ribboned”. For the first time in world history comes a medal which has no worth in sporting or even keeping. The first new medal since the Bronze Star created in 1944, it will be considered a “bit higher in ranking than the Bronze Star, but lower than the Silver Star”. Hype is stretched taut when video gamers are being awarded medals. Could this be why Panetta and others are warning that “the next Pearl Harbor could well be a computer-based assault”? America’s largest combat veterans group, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, got it right when they called the new medal the “Geek Cross” with a suggestion that “the USA was close to handing video-gamers Purple Hearts for animated wounds”. “Those furthest from the fight/risk are not eligible for a higher award than those engaging the enemy and risking their lives each day,” Defense spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen said. The Pentagon’s drone medal is about as authentic as Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize. So far the silence from the ‘cyber troops’ for whom the Drone Medal is being created, is deafening. Could be their ranks do not need a medal but a chest to pin it on.