OPINION:
March 25 is officially designated as Medal of Honor Day in the United States. The day provides an opportunity to pay tribute to the bravest of the brave in our armed forces— the more than 3,400 recipients of the Medal of Honor from the Civil War through today: Men who have “distinguished [themselves] conspicuously at the risk of [their] life above and beyond the call of duty.”
This Medal of Honor Day will also provide an occasion to focus on a glaring problem in the Medal’s award process and prompt the Pentagon leadership to address it. The problem is the injustice done to the Iraq War veterans.
To provide context, here are the statistics of Medal of Honor award presentations by major conflict since President Abraham Lincoln authorized the award of the Medal in 1861: The Civil War: 1,523; World War 1: 124; World War 11: 464; the Korean War: 136; Vietnam War: 247; Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan): 20, five posthumous, 15 to living veterans; Operation Iraqi Freedom: seven.
The glaring anomaly is instantly apparent: only seven Medals of Honor for valor in Iraq. And of the seven medal recipients, only one is living. Army staff sergeant David Bellavia was finally given the Medal of Honor in 2019 — 15 years after the action for which he was honored.
This is a major injustice. More than 1.5 million men and women served in combat in Iraq, in a conflict that lasted almost a decade and in which 32,226 service men and women were injured and 4,487 were killed in action.
As of 2009, there were NO living recipients of the Medal of Honor from Iraq OR Afghanistan. Then, at a press conference, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates loudly proclaimed his disbelief that not a single veteran of these conflicts was worthy of the Medal of Honor.
Corrective action soon followed, and 15 Afghanistan veterans were awarded the Medal of Honor. All were eminently deserving of the honor, and each of the 15 award citations tells a story of enormous courage.
Such stories also abound in the ranks of the Iraq War veterans, however. That conflict involved some of the fiercest combat since the Vietnam War and reflects many instances of incredible valor and selfless sacrifice.
Consider the story of Marine Staff Sergeant Bradley Kasal, who, on March 13, 2004, entered an enemy-occupied building in Fallujah, Iraq, dubbed the “house of death” by the Marines. Several Marines were trapped inside the house, and Kasal resolved to save them. Upon entering the building, he killed a jihadist soldier and began dragging a wounded Marine to safety.
Seven rounds of enemy fire then hit him. Though badly wounded, he used his own limited supply of bandages to treat the wounded Marine. When a jihadist lobbed a grenade at them, Kasal rolled on top of it, absorbing the blast and sustaining 43 shrapnel wounds. Kasal refused medical treatment and would not leave the house until all the insurgents inside were killed and the Marines were safe.
The photo of Kasal, his uniform drenched in blood and still carrying his pistol in his hand while being supported by two Marines, became one of the iconic images of the Iraq War and inspired the commissioning of a statue that was dedicated at Camp Pendleton in 2014.
Can anyone doubt that Brad Kasal deserves the Medal of Honor?
David Bellavia knows the story of Brad Kasal and many other similarly inspiring stories of his fellow soldiers and Marines in Iraq. He has said that he could easily name 15 or more of his former colleagues who are as deserving of the Medal of Honor as he is.
So why is there a paucity of Medals of Honor for the veterans of Iraq?
In November, Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq during the “surge,” was asked this question at an Army and Navy Club event.
His cryptic answer: “We screwed up.”
He didn’t specify who, how or why. Those are questions that need to be answered. The proper way to find those answers and redress this injustice is for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to establish a hand-picked military commission.
Such commissions have been established periodically by past Secretaries of Defense and have rectified past omissions by awarding the Medal of Honor to living veterans of World War 11, Korea and Vietnam—sometimes decades after the conflicts involved have ended.
It’s not too late to redress the indefensible slighting of our Iraq war veterans in the same way. Secretary Hegseth, the ball is in your court. Now is the time to provide justice for your brothers in uniform.
• James C. Roberts is executive chairman of the American Veterans Center.
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