honoring Beamer, Bingham, Burnett, & Glick...

In My Humble Opinion
1

Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham, Thomas E. Burnett, Jr., and Jeremy Glick, otherwise known as the four passengers on United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania after those four, perhaps joined by others, took on their armed hijackers.

There has been much talk of posthumously honoring these brave men with the Presidential Medal of Freedom and other awards, such as the Congressional Gold Medal. Personally, I’m all for it.

However, as they weren’t in [active duty] military service, they don’t meet the traditional criteria for the Congressional Medal of Honor, our nation’s greatest honor. On the other hand, Pres. Bush did declare the terrorist attacks an act of war against our nation, so the question may not be so cut-and-dried after all.

My question, then, to military Dopers especially: do you feel they qualify for our nation’s greatest military honor? Would you endorse setting a civilian precedent in this case? Would it be appropriate to award a fifth medal to the other passengers and crew collectively, as some may well have assisted the four known to have resisted?

Here’s some sites, including online petitions calling for various medals for these four:

To sign a petition for awarding the four the Presidential Medal of Honor:
http://www.petitiononline.com/gonewark/petition.html

To sign a petition for awarding the four the Congressional Gold Medal:

http://www.petitiononline.com/Flight93/

The parent site for these petitions [there are many others, as well]:

http://www.wtvzone.com/kathleenskamelot/911pages/petitions.html

2

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the civilian counterpart to the Congressional Medal of Honor. If anyone deserves it, presumably the passengers who saved the White House would. There’s still a problem in establishing exactly who they were - we know those 4 names because they had cell phones.

3

Why not just give it to everyone aboard the plane? I mean, yeah, cheapening the medal, and all that, but they all DID give their lives to save countless others. IMHO, they all deserve it, especially since we can’t exactly know for certain who did what.

4

Eegad. I forgot to include this information in my OP:

This site is informative re. the Congressional Medal of Honor [link followed by excerpt]

http://www.cmohs.org/medal/medal_faq.htm#10A10.

What are the guidelines for which the medal could be awarded?
10A. On July 25,1963 Congress established a set of guidelines under which the Medal of Honor could be awarded:
a.) while engaged in an action against an enemy of the United States;
b.) while engaged in military operations involving conflict with an opposing foreign force; or,
c.) while serving with friendly forces engaged in armed conflict against an opposing armed force in which the United States is not a belligerent party.

It looks like they might qualify under (a), depending on the legal definition of “action against an enemy”. Doper lawyers – what do you think?

This site was also interesting & informative:

5

Since this question is soliciting people’s opinions, I’ll move the thread over to IMHO.

6

hhhmmm, the last i read (in newsweek) was that sen specter introduced a bill to award the con. gold medal to the passengers and crew of flight 93. specter said that the bill could be expanded to recognize act of heroism on the other three flights as well.

the fbi gave special credit to 5 men on flight 93, beemer, bingham, burnett, glick, and nacke.