I really hope that "award inflation" is stopped and maybe "battlefield heroics" gain their own separate status from the meritorious service.
I had a reasonably long time in the service, starting as an enlisted man and finishing as a lieutenant colonel. I saw many views of the service and its idiosyncracies. There was award inflation based on rank, certain awards reserved for colonels and above, and there was also strong pressure to obtain certain awards to be in a better position for promotion. I agree that combat support and combat service support troops are exposed to severe danger sometimes and they are essential in their jobs. I just feel that those rare events where you know that what you are doing will get you horribly killed and you do it anyway should be a separate class of awards, not confused with anything else.
While I was being trained as a new second lieutenant, I saw a Marine Colonel awarded the Bronze Star with V device for "being instrumental in the fielding of the M-16 rifle". Later, when I was attending a graduation dinner for a service school, the young lady airman sitting across from me was wearing the Bronze Star and when I asked her how she earned it, she said that she "provided essential support to the operations in Grenada" from her office in the Pentagon.
These sort of things make those of us who were in direct combat pause. Is that all our service meant to our country? There were few of us as it was who signed up for the most dangerous stuff - and it was dangerous: I never met a single Marine infantryman in Vietnam who hadn't been wounded. They often didn't report what they considered "scratches" because they wanted to stay with their units and not be sent home (unlike 'ol Combat John Kerry) and often the wounds were caused by your own grenades - it's hard to throw the things far enough to avoid being hit by your own frags. One man I knew was hit by a small fragment and concealed it from all of us - just rubbed Johnson & Johnson First Aid Cream into the hole and kept going - until he collapsed later in the day. I knew many, many other acts of heroism that weren't seen by any officer and most of the real heroes never got any medals at all. All the same, it still galls to think that what small recognition we got can be confused with "outstanding support for the operations in Grenada".
I don't begrudge the Chaplain who was recognized for his superb work supporting our forces in Afghanistan. I just wish they'd picked a different medal, that's all. Life ain't perfect, I guess,
To put the whole medal thing in perspective, there were 20 Medals of Honor awarded in a one hour battle in South Dakota in 1890. In that battle a Cavalry unit of about 500 soldiers managed to kill about 90 "combatants" and about 200 women and children. Most of the 25 fatal Army casualties were probably the victims of Friendly Fire.