I feel that the "medal factory" mentality that we've fallen into collectively has cheapened the system. So much so, in my personal experience, that I end up looking at the number of SSDRs a guy has (and his rank) before I give any credence to his personal awards.
For our older members: what you may not realize is that there is a new culture of awards now (in my opinion). I don't know how it worked in your day, but now there is an expectation that I don't think existed in your day. Maybe it did. I'd like to hear more about how is was way back when.
Today, people expect an end-of-tour award. They feel screwed if they didn't get one.
People sometimes write up their own awards. Sometimes BEFORE the action occurs. Sometimes they have their subordinates do it for them. People "campaign" for awards. I have personally witnessed this both in the Navy and the Marine Corps.
I agree here, with exception being the MoH. For some reason, the President (or more likely higher HQ's) has been extremely reluctant in awarding them. In a decade of war, 8 have been awarded, only one to a living recipient. That's with TWO wars going on. There were 246 in Vietnam. Talk all your want about how the wars now are fought differently, but there's no way that can be right. Some of the actions that would have earned a MoH in the past get downgraded -- sometimes significantly -- because for some reason the medal has become too sanctimonious. I don't know the numbers for the DSC/Navy Cross/Air Force Cross, but I've heard of very few being awarded as well.
Not that it's necessarily up to me to decide who is deserving of it, but I know of one E-6 in Iraq that ended up with an Army Commendation Medal with Valour device for something that, 40 years ago would have likely earned him a Medal of Honor.
Anyways, the part that really bothers me is the Bronze Star. In the Army at least, the Bronze Star was seen as a end of deployment award for all staff JO's (and occasionally E-7 and up). At the same time, there were several people who earned Bronze Stars with V's who probably should have had a higher award. The issue to me was that you're essentially rewarding someone who did staff action with someone who performed valorously in combat with the same award (basically with an asterix next to it saying see citation). This is where the awarding of certain medals cheapens the rest.
The worst part is what you, and a few others, have touched on. The fact that end of deployment awards are typically required to be turned in to certain points of the CoC for review prior to the deployment ending. I assume someone decided this was a good idea so that you could give someone their medal right as they got home. Unfortunately that means you're now not only cheapening the medal for the guys that actually deserved it by giving it to the (potentially) undeserving, you're doing it to the (potentially) undeserving before they've even done anything!
In the end, my view is that anything that sits below a Silver Star or without a Valour device in someone's rack probably has some explanation behind it (e.g. they really warranted something better and the CoC dropped the ball, it was handed out like candy). For those that don't fall into that category, I can probably give unconditional respect to the actions of the person that earned it.
Just as one last point, for those who say I may be forgetting the Purple Heart: During one of my OIF deployments, our compound came under "attack." A bullet hit a wall, threw a chunk of debris off that hit a guy in the arm. He was bleeding, but required no stitches (read: it probably needed a band-aid, but if he used one he'd get made fun of). The command put him in for a Purple Heart. BEFORE the award was approved, the CoC found out that it was really a US Army unit (no indig.) that was firing on an empty building that they suspected someone was in. Their lack of SA caused the wound. The CoC didn't pull the Purple Heart. So now you've got a guy with a boo-boo who wears it because some idiot shot at an empty building and nearly hit a friendly. The conclusion of this story applies to the whole thread: Not all medals are created equal.
