TRUMP AND THE MEDAL OF HONOR

I have to say at outset here, that like anyone else with an ounce of decency and the slightest understanding of history, I have been seething since Thursday night. I am known to say - about the terrified old man in Florida who is now summering at his combination golf club/first wife’s cemetery plot in New Jersey - that as low as you think he can go, he can always go far lower.

He certainly outdid himself Thursday night, down at his private club/illegal residence (Yes, when he got permission to turn the place into a private club, he signed a paper in which he stated no one would use any part of the place as a private residence; as usual, he had his fingers crossed behind his back when he did so.)

To wit, he said to the gathered collection of Trump-loving gargoyles:

“But I really. I have to say, Miriam [Adelson], I watched Sheldon [Adelson] sitting so proud in the White House when we gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom. That’s the highest award you can get as a civilian. It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor. But civilian version. It’s actually much better because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, that’s soldiers, they’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead. She gets it, and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman.

“And they’re rated equal. But she got the Presidential Medal of Freedom and she got it for her–it’s through committees and everything else. She’s done an incredible job on addiction as a doctor and so many other things. And I watched your husband sitting at the White House and he was so proud. I’ve never seen him so proud. He didn’t like to show it because he was cool. Right? But he was so proud of you.”

Let’s get something clear right now: the Presidential Medal of Freedom IS NOT “the equal” of the Medal of Honor.

But then, this is the moron who spent last Monday talking with the world’s richest Unreconstructed Afrikaner Space Nazi, where they dismissed the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki because today the two cities are thriving now.

Before Trump, the Presidential Medal of Freedom did have some honor and prestige attached to it, but it’s current status is best illustrated by listing people who he doled it out to while in office.

He gave one to Rush Limbaugh during the State of the Union address, and handed them out to sports heroes from Babe Ruth to Tiger Woods.

But the important list are the people who ran cover for him. Among them were Jim Jordan and Miriam Adelson, the wife of Sheldon Adelson, who gave him $100 million of the profits he made running casinos in China. Now that Sheldon has gone to where people like him go to, Miriam is giving Trump another 100 million in a political PAC to support his campaign to destroy America.

That Trump would speak as he did is only surprising that it happened last Thursday and not another day ending in “day.” This is the piece of worthless shit who said of the late Senator John McCain’s imprisonment and torture that “He’s a hero because he was captured - I like people who weren’t captured.” Then there was his 2018 visit to Europe where he called the 1,800 Marines who fell in the Battle of Belleau Wood “suckers and losers,” after declining to go to the cemetery in which they are interred because it was raining and that bird’s nest on top of his head might get wet. And of course who can forget his visit to Arlington Cemetery where he told Marine General John Kelly that he didn’t understand why the people buried there had served, saying “I don‘t get it, what was in it for them,?”

All that from a third-generation draft dodger whose grandfather came here to avoid being conscripted in Bavaria, whose main claim to fame was his work as a pimp running brothels in the Klondike gold fields.

There are 3,900 men and one woman who have been awarded the Medal of Honor - there is no such thing as a “Medal of Honor winner,” it’s not a damn prize - for an act of bravery in combat “above and beyond the call of duty.” That term means that, if any of those whose heroism has been recognized by being awarded the Medal of Honor had not done as they did, no one would have ever faulted them.

In my career as an historian, I have had the good fortune to meet ten of those people.

The first one was Jimmy Doolittle, who was honored for leading the Doolittle Raid on Japan in 1942, about which I don’t need to say more.

There were four in particular whose stories interlock: Hector Cafferata, William E. Barber, Raymond G. Davis, and Thomas J. Hudner. I met them researching my book, The Frozen Chosen. Had they not done what they did, history would have recorded the Surrender at Chosin, not the Breakout From Chosin.

Hector Cafferata was, by his own account, “not much of a Marine.” But on the first night on what became known as Fox Hill - the commanding height in Toktong Pass, the only escape route for the Marines up at the reservoir - Hector Cafferata “got mad” when his unit, Fox Company of the 2/7 Marines - was attacked by an overwhelming force of Chinese soldiers. His best friend was wounded by a grenade and blinded. The two fought through the night, with his friend reloading the rifles they had collected from their dead fellow Marines, while Hector Cafferata shot and killed 48 of the enemy (by the count made around his position the next morning) thus breaking the assault.

That first night - of four - Fox Company lost half of the 240 Marines assigned, dead and wounded. They gave as good as they got, killing over 300 of the enemy and smashing the first of four assault battalions they would face. This all happened in the middle of the worst blizzard to come out of Siberia in a century.

William E. Barber was assigned as Fox Company commander a week before the battle. Most of the men - they were all reservists - hated him at first when he made they shave in cold water and “look like Marines” after they had been largely ill-treated by the Marines between the landing at Wonsan, where their first commander was killed, and their arrival at Chosin. The first night of the battle, Barber was wounded in both legs. Over the course of the next three nights, he led the men by his own example, dragging himself from position to position to encourage them. As Cafferata said of him, “Captain Barber saved our lives.” By the second night, the Marines were “sandbagging” their positions with the frozen bodies of their dead enemies.

Lt. Colonel Raymond G. Davis was a battalion commander in the Fifth Marines, up at the reservoir. When the decision was made for a fighting retreat down Toktong Pass, he led a group of picked volunteers on a 38-hour cross country race through rugged mountains in the snowstorm, to get to Fox Hill in time to reinforce the survivors of Fox Company and hold the crucial position.

Of the 240 Marines who went up the hill two days before the battle began, 60 walked or were carried off the hill the morning after the fourth night of battle as the retreating Marines successfully came through the pass. They had defeated four 500-man assault battalions, taking 100 percent casualties, killed and wounded. The fight on Fox Hill is the bloodiest small-unit action in American military history.

The fourth man, Tom Hudner, was a Navy pilot, one of those flying support for the Marines in the battle. On the last day of the retreat through Toktong Pass, he and three other fliers were on a support mission when his wingman and best friend, Jesse Brown - the first black Naval Aviator - was hit by ground fire and forced down. When Jesse didn’t climb out of his airplane, Hudner deliberately crash-landed his airplane to try and rescue his friend (it was the deliberate crash landing, knowing his chances of survival were less than 50-50, that met the “above and beyond the call of duty”). In the end his friend Jesse froze to death, unable to get out of the airplane due to the damage in the landing and his own injuries. Hudner only survived because a helicopter pilot came in and picked him up in the last light of day.

There was one other memorable individual. That was Mike Novosel Sr., a medevac chopper pilot in Vietnam. He flew his helicopter into the “valley of death” seven times, to rescue wounded soldiers who were surrounded by the enemy, under fire all the way in and out, each time. He rescued them all. Fort Rucker - where the Army trains their helicopter pilots - is now named Fort Novosel in his memory.

My friend and fellow film maker and Vietnam Veteran (he was a Ranger) Dorian Walker and I tried for two years to make a movie about Mike Novosel. The response we got was, “We’ve made enough movies about that war.”

Donald Trump is unworthy to polish the shoes of any one of those people.

The Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) is very different. They are a conservative-leaning group of veterans, many of whom likely have voted for Trump at least once.

But on Friday, The VFW National Commander Al Lipphardt issued the following statement

“These asinine comments not only diminish the significance of our nation’s highest award for valor, but also crassly characterizes the sacrifices of those who have risked their lives above and beyond the call of duty.

“When a candidate to serve as our military’s commander-in-chief so brazenly dismisses the valor and reverence symbolized by the Medal of Honor and those who have earned it, I must question whether they would discharge their responsibilities to our men and women in uniform with the seriousness and discernment necessary for such a powerful position.

“It is even more disappointing when these comments come from a man who already served in this noble office and should frankly already know better.

“While the Presidential Medal of Freedom maybe our nation’s highest civilian award, the Medal of Honor is more sacred as it represents the gallantry and intrepidity of courageous and selfless service members, often at the cost of grievous wounds and even their lives. It’s because of our Medal of Honor recipients that great Americans like Miriam Adelson have the freedom to live to their fullest potential and make such lasting contributions to our great nation.

“We would like to remind Mr. Trump that the 12 times he had the honor of awarding the Medal of Honor as president of the United States, those were heroes not of his own choosing. He bestowed those medals on behalf of Congress, representing all Americans of a grateful nation.

“We hold the donation of their lives in service to our country in the highest esteem, and so should he.”

Author, journalist, and TV writer/producer, David Simon said: “This submoronic shitheel gave the Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh and Devin Nunes. And because he's utterly ignorant, ahistorical and terrified to read anything longer than his own tweets, it's certain that he hasn't bothered to read the combat accounts of recipients of the Medal of Honor.”

Bill Kristol: "Trump called America’s war dead 'suckers' and 'losers.' Now he denigrates Medal of Honor recipients because some are deceased or injured. Trump has denied making that 'suckers' and 'losers' comment...Now he’s expressed much the same sentiment on camera."

General Barry McCaffrey: “It’s almost impossible to believe that Trump as a Presidential candidate could sound this ignorant. Disordered language. Incoherent thinking. Fifth grade stuff.”

Marine Iraq Veteran Dario DiBattista: “Part of my first day as a combat replacement in Iraq, was the memorial ceremony for Cpl Jason Dunham. He leaped on a grenade to absorb its blast and save his fellow Marines. He made the Ultimate Sacrifice. Not even close to the same award Rush Limbaugh got. F all the way off.”

Fuck all the way off indeed.

Please support your favorite political columnists with the money you could have spent on corporate media subscriptions! Only $7/month or $70/year.

Comments are for paid subscribers.