{"id":60975,"date":"2015-07-23T07:25:42","date_gmt":"2015-07-23T11:25:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=60975"},"modified":"2015-07-22T09:47:57","modified_gmt":"2015-07-22T13:47:57","slug":"and-in-the-wtf-and-ygbsm-department","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=60975","title":{"rendered":"And In the (Historical) “WTF?” and “YGBSM!” Departments . . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

Remember how Jimmy the Clueless treated the military just \u201coh so well\u201d? (Yes, that was sarcasm.\u00a0 This article includes much of that.)<\/p>\n

The recent mention of Operation EAGLE CLAW here<\/a><\/em> got me curious, so I did a bit of digging.\u00a0 I discovered something I never knew.\u00a0 And as the old Southern expression goes:\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cY\u2019all ain\u2019t gonna believe this sh!t!\u201d<\/p>\n

Take a look at this list<\/a><\/em>. It does not include an entry for Operation EAGLE CLAW \u2013 AKA the Iranian Hostage Rescue Mission.<\/p>\n

Now, take a look at this list<\/a><\/em> \u2013 specifically, at the 7th entry on the list\u2019s 2nd page. I suspect you\u2019ll be as shocked as I was.<\/p>\n

Yes, you\u2019re reading that correctly. Military personnel who actually flew into Iran on that mission<\/em> DID NOT receive the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal (AFEM)<\/span>. Instead, they received . . . the Humanitarian Service Medal (HSM).<\/p>\n

I wish I was kidding.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not slamming the HSM; humanitarian assistance missions are legit, and they can be dangerous as hell too. \u00a0We recently lost some Marines on a humanitarian mission in Nepal<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

But it just seems to me that going in harm\u2019s way to rescue American citizens and military personnel held hostage as the result of an act of war by a foreign government is fundamentally different than any kind of humanitarian relief operation. IMO serving in such an operation should receive a different kind of recognition.<\/p>\n

But it didn’t; don’t ask me why.\u00a0 Only thing I can figure out is that either the Pentagon or the POTUS must have felt attempting to rescue US prisoners held by Iran after they invaded sovereign US territory (the US Embassy in Tehran) was essentially no different than helping resettle the criminals Castro palmed off on us during the Mariel Boat Lift.\u00a0 Or maybe they were afraid of p!ssing off the Iranians even more if they offered appropriate recognition with an AFEM.\u00a0 (Either way, my money’s on the POTUS – but I could be wrong.)<\/p>\n

In a bit of historic irony, US military support for resettlement of those Mariel Boat Lift \u201crefugees\u201d is the next operation on the list of officially recognized HSM operations. It started 2 days after Operation EAGLE CLAW.<\/p>\n

If this little bit of historical “appropriate recognition” doesn\u2019t fall into the WTF? And YGBSM! categories, I\u2019ll just be damned if I know what does.<\/p>\n

Thanks once again \u201coh so much\u201d, Mr. Peanut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remember how Jimmy the Clueless treated the military just \u201coh so well\u201d? (Yes, that was sarcasm.\u00a0 … And In the (Historical) “WTF?” and “YGBSM!” Departments . . . .<\/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":[10,84,236],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical","category-military-issues","category-wtf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60975","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=60975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60975\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}