Why does it take so long to award a Hero the Medal of Honor?
From the Vietnam era to the present it has taken at least a year to process an award of the Medal of Honor from the date of the action. In recently years a number of delayed awards have been made of the Medal of Honor. This is because of the “I deserve one too” phenomena. There are people who feel that they have done actions worthy of the Medal of Honor who then ask their congressman to get them one. While some of these cases have great merit it has the effect of politicizing the Medal of Honor award process. It also opens a Pandora’s box of thousands of veterans who may have recieved the Navy Cross or Distinguished Service Medal who feel they deserve an upgrade to the Medal of Honor. As Congress doesn’t want to say no to a legitimate war hero the phenomena of late awards will continue. BTW – I think the longest delay so far in awarding the Medal of Honor was when Theodore Roosevelt recieved it posthumously in 2001 for heroism at San Juan Hill in Cuba in 1898. 103 years after the actio
when first given out the medal had no where near the same precedence as it does now as a matter of fact there was a CO who made a promise to give it to his whole battalion for just reenlisting during the first couple of years when it came out after about World War One time it was lifted to its more modern stature now unfortunantly due to the stature of the award and the actions it takes many people will not get it until they were either dead or close to it because of the time it took for all the witnesses, the voting, and the president to sign off on it
