[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 65 (Monday, May 23, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 23, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                       POSTHUMOUS MEDALS OF HONOR

                                 ______


                         HON. ROBERT K. DORNAN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                          Monday, May 23, 1994

  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, the Medal of Honor was awarded posthumously 
to Sergeants Gordon and Shughart today May 23, 1994. How lucky America 
is to have such heroes serving us. We, as a nation are starved for 
heroes in public civilian service.

               [From the Washington Times, May 17, 1994]

               Some More ``Viability Within the System''

                           (By Wesley Pruden)

       Harry Truman stepped out into the Rose Garden one morning 
     at the end of World War II to pay himself the honor of 
     pinning the Medal of Honor on the chest of an American 
     soldier.
       ``If I could,'' he told the young rifleman, a 
     sharecropper's boy from Arkansas, `'I'd happily trade places 
     with you this morning.'' Mr. Truman put his thumb to his eye 
     to wipe away a speck of ``dust.''
       The Medal of Honor was special to Mr. Truman not because he 
     was the president of the United States, and held it within 
     his power to confer the nation's highest tribute for valor in 
     combat, but because he had been a soldier in combat himself. 
     He understood that what the heroes of all American wars hold 
     in common, in life and in death, is uncommon valor.
       Next week another American president will award the Medal 
     of Honor, this time not to the men themselves, but to their 
     families. Their sons rest in Valhalla.
       The two men to be honored, to the extent that it is within 
     the power of the living to pay honor to men who have written 
     great deeds in blood, are Master Sgt. Gary I. Gordon of 
     Lincoln, ME, and Sgt. 1st Class Randall D. Shughart of 
     Newville, PA., both of whom died in Somalia. The shots that 
     killed them were fired by Somalian thugs, but their blood is 
     on the hands of Les Aspin, the hapless congressman-cum-
     bureaucrat who was Bill Clinton's first secretary of 
     defense--the man who, sitting in an office at the Pentagon 
     with lots of orderlies to fetch his coffee and sharpen his 
     pencils, decided that the U.S. commanders in Somalia didn't 
     know what they were doing when they begged him for the armor 
     to protect their men.
       The two Medal of Honor recipients, members of the Army 
     Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, NC, were dropped 
     into a firefight during a raid on the headquarters of Mohamed 
     Farrah Aidid, the maximum leader of the Somalian thugs. This 
     was the raid that ended with the deaths of 18 American 
     ``peacekeepers.''
       The two sergeants put down rifle fire from the first of two 
     helicopters that went to the aid of raiding party, trying to 
     protect them from automatic-weapons fire and rocket-propelled 
     grenades. In the words of the Army citation:
       ``The two sergeants unhesitatingly volunteered to go to the 
     aid of their wounded comrades at a second crash site despite 
     being well aware of the growing number of enemy closing in. 
     Sergeants Gordon and Shughart worked their way through a 
     tangle of shacks, shanties and privies, taking heavy fire 
     throughout, until they ran out of ammunition.
       ``After Sergeant Shughart was fatally wounded, Master 
     Sergeant Gordon recovered another rifle from the crash site 
     and gave it and the last five rounds of rifle ammunition to 
     the injured pilot with the words, `Good luck.' Then, armed 
     only with his pistol, Sergeant Gordon continued to fight 
     until he was fatally wounded. By their extraordinary heroism, 
     Sergeants Gordon and Shughart saved the pilot's life.''
       Inspired by such uncommon valor, the president, even then 
     perfecting his strategy for Port-au-Prince, called off the 
     search for Aidid and withdrew all U.S. special forces.
       These will be the first medals of Honor to be bestowed by 
     the nation since the war that Mr. Clinton successfully 
     dodged, and if uniforms make the president uncomfortable it's 
     probably true that medals do, too. Nevertheless, these medals 
     may have uses in the president's endless campaign to restore 
     his ``political viability within the system.''
       The White House announced the medal ceremony, to be held 
     next Monday, after Mr. Clinton sat for eight weeks on the 
     completed paperwork, presented with the Army's entreaties to 
     pass favorably on the citations. Congress authorizes the 
     medals, but the president must award them.
       Some Army officials suspect that Mr. Clinton sat on the 
     awards because he did not want to call attention to the 
     deadly blunders in Somalia, but aides in the White House 
     insist that this is not so, it's just that the president has 
     been busy formulating his policies for Bosnia (three policies 
     per day), Haiti (one policy for the morning, one for the 
     afternoon) and North Korea (two in the mornings, sometimes 
     none in the afternoon).
       The president called in the families of the sergeants late 
     last week and slipped effortlessly into his role as 
     ``commander in chief.'' The debacle in Somalia just wasn't 
     his fault, he told the families. He was mad as anything when 
     he heard about it.
       Bill Clinton may or may not find a speck in his eye when he 
     awards the Medal of Honor, but it's difficult to imagine that 
     he could understand what Harry Truman was talking about. It's 
     not even his fault. Like all of us, the president is a child 
     of his times, and it was his bad luck to come to maturity (as 
     we define maturity for his generation) in the America of the 
     Gelded Age.
       Now it's on to Omaha Beach!

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