{"id":38570,"date":"2013-11-23T08:53:17","date_gmt":"2013-11-23T13:53:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=38570"},"modified":"2013-11-23T09:05:10","modified_gmt":"2013-11-23T14:05:10","slug":"maybe-some-good-will-come-of-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=38570","title":{"rendered":"Maybe Some Good Will Come From It"},"content":{"rendered":"

It seems the claims that CPT William Swenson’s Medal of Honor packet was simply “lost” might actually be true.\u00a0 According to the Army Times<\/a>, a recent DoD IG investigation found that loss of award recommendations was a “frequent” occurrence at Headquarters, US Forces – Afghanistan.\u00a0 Award procedures there were apparently a mess.<\/p>\n

I’d like to think that was actually the case, and that Swenson’s MoH packet was simply lost through accident or incompetence vice being deliberately sabotaged.\u00a0 It’s sad, though, that I still have to wonder if that’s really the case.\u00a0 Politics (either inter- or intra-Service) should play absolutely zero role<\/em> in military awards for heroism.\u00a0 In Swenson’s case, I’m still not absolutely convinced that politics didn’t play a role in the “loss” of his original award recommendation.<\/p>\n

We all know that the military’s award system has major problems; we all know it will never be perfect.\u00a0 But maybe Swenson’s case – and the resulting high-profile interest in the delay – will be a catalyst to help fix some of those issues.<\/p>\n

I hate to presume speak for others; most don’t need or want me to speak on their behalf.\u00a0 But I’ll go out on a limb here and say that if the delay here helps fix the system, even partially, I’m guessing CPT Swenson would say the delay in his case was worth it.<\/p>\n

No, it never should have happened.\u00a0 But maybe some good will come from it anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems the claims that CPT William Swenson’s Medal of Honor packet was simply “lost” might … Maybe Some Good Will Come From It<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[198,130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-army","category-real-soldiers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38570\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}