Combat Exaggeration — Transcending Partisanship

By guest columnist Al Rodbell

Yesterday, some friends who get together after tennis were shooting the breeze, which sometimes gets political and has been known to become a bit heated. We got onto the issue of exaggeration of the closeness to combat, recently in the news, first Brian Williams and later accusations against Bill O'Reilly. I shared an insight that this related to "stolen valor," a specific term meaning a 2005 law (ruled unconstitutional) that would have made it a federal crime to claim possession of a given medal of honor for combat service in wartime.

My antagonist, was a Rush Limbaugh fan I'll call Dave. We both were active in getting our city to triple the size of the tennis center that we now enjoy most every morning, and have collaborated on such recreational issues afterwards. I rib him about his reliance on Rush, and once, when I agreed with the celebrity newsman, I told Dave about it and then when he thought I was being converted, I said, "....after his riff about something that was not really political right before he went to commercial, he had to make a connection, to leave the audience with an out of the blue '...And this is why we have to get rid of that guy occupying the oval office.'"

But, he being a retired aeronautical engineer with an interest in the world beyond his partisan indulgences, we have a respectful "tennis friendship." It turns out he hadn't even heard about the O'Reilly accusations, but he did know about the Veterns Administration chief Robert MacDonald's "lie" about serving in special services. Dave didn't care too much about the circumstances, that it was his echoing the words of a homeless veteran, not a prepared public statement. That it was his way of expanding on the common experiences of one whose life had not gone well. But Dave knew all he had to know about that incident, which is that MacDonald was a Obama appointee.

Well, I let it go. I'm writing this essay not to trash conservatives, but to share how it's possible to connect. As we were talking about the newsman's purported exaggerations, something came to me, which is why a simple misstatement about the degree of intensity of one's military experience can be so meaningful. It turned out that Dave knew the incident well — the example of my "stolen valor" connection — including the man's name, Admiral Jeremy Boorda

It was all about an attachment to a ribbon that military persons wear on their vests on formal occasions, each one as evidence of service, courage and awards of acknowledgement thereof. I'll quote from the Wikipedia article linked above to describe it:

The Navy "V" device is a miniature bronze letter V worn on certain medals and service ribbons, indicating valor in combat. Photographs showed him wearing them in the 1980s, but Boorda had stopped wearing the Vs years before, when he was informed that his experience in Vietnam did not qualify him to wear them. Reports at the time of Boorda's suicide indicated that his wearing of the "V" devices had not been intentional deception on his part, but had been an unintentional mistake that resulted from following verbal instructions delivered to commanders by Admiral Zumwalt when he was Chief of Naval Operations, as well as conflicting interpretations of Navy award regulations.

Yes, "at the time of his suicide". This man who was the first to have risen from the lowest enlisted ranks to be the highest ranking naval officer was so affected by the accusation that it, at the very least, contributed to his taking of his own life.

Dave and I had a little bit of a different interpretation of his action, about how clear was Boorda's breach, whether it was a misunderstanding or a brazen case of stolen valor. When I made the former argument, he responded with "it was bad enough that he killed himself". Meaning, if he had a reasonable argument, he would never have done this. But we went on. He described a story told by his older brother who was waiting at the shores of the Rhine to invade Germany, and the troops were firing across the river. His brother told him how how ranking officers from H.Q. were rushing in, grabbing a rife from a grunt, just to get off a few shots, so they will earn that combat V on their ribbons.

A few hours later when I checked my emails, there was one from Dave, "

Al,

We were both right...sorta. I had the name right but Navy is correct. Boorda was chief of Naval Operations. Wikipedia has a good writeup. The medal in question is called the "combat V" which is added to other ribbons but must be officially awarded. Adm. Zumwalt [his boss] had told him to wear them.

I responded with this:

Just read the Wikipedia article. Perhaps this is something we can both agree on — that it was a profound human tragedy.

Which Dave concluded with:

Agree. Particularly because he came up through the ranks to reach the highest level in the Navy.

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I am writing this for one reason, which is that too often our media takes sides in our partisan divide. It becomes a challenge, even if the attempt is made to avoid being attributed to one side or the other. Yet, there are events that have been so distorted that can be understood as touching our common humanity. In this case, the conversation caused Dave to learn more about Admiral Boorda, to see how the extremes of vilification can tap into insecurities that can cause, for some, an unbearable pain.

Partisan identification has a value, it provides cohesion to perspectives that their adherents espouse. While it's worse than some utopia of universal agreement, it's a hell of a lot worse than a commonality based on fear of dissent. In the clash of ideas of a free society, anger can escalate — and the vulnerable individuals behind the labels are lost. Sharing our memory of the tragedy of Admiral Jeremy Boorda reminded two opposing political partisans of the humanity that we all share.

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