Best Defense
Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

Comment of the day: Time to end the CIB?

I was struck by this argument made by "Hunter," who wrote a comment yesterday about the Combat Infantry Badge and similar awards. They: [H]ave outlived their usefulness and should be done away with. If you knew the bureacratic nonsense and hoops that must be navigated to get just one of your soldiers one of these ...

575151_medalsresized2.jpg
575151_medalsresized2.jpg

I was struck by this argument made by "Hunter," who wrote a comment yesterday about the Combat Infantry Badge and similar awards. They:

[H]ave outlived their usefulness and should be done away with. If you knew the bureacratic nonsense and hoops that must be navigated to get just one of your soldiers one of these awards you would agree. I do not exaggerate one bit when I say the packets varied from .5 to 1 inch thick — for each submission.

My soldiers generally laid low and didn’t piss off the populace, we were rewarded for their discipline. There were very few potshots against our gun trucks and only 2 IEDs — in total we fired 9 warning shots in 9 months of operations. Meanwhile my brother Bn down the road unleashed 100 .50 cal rounds in every engagement and (reasonably assuredly) gave insurgents and Iraqis more to be pissed about. Their CIB/CAB rate was 7 times ours (~20 soldiers in my unit versus ~150 in his).

Of course if we extrapolate further — the Purple Heart should go away too.

All Army personnel get right shoulder patches — it ought to be enough. End the gamesmanship. Lots of guys get CIBS in Iraq, but the war effort would be better served if they had never fired their weapons.

It hadn’t occurred to me that these awards could hurt the war effort — interesting thought worth looking into. But I disagree with doing away with the Purple Heart.

Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military from 1991 to 2008 for the Wall Street Journal and then the Washington Post. He can be reached at ricksblogcomment@gmail.com. Twitter: @tomricks1

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