Editorial: Road clear for database - Army Community - Army Discussions - Army Times

Editorial: Road clear for database

The push to create a public database of the nation’s highest awards for valor — and the military personnel who earned those awards — reaches a critical crossroads in the coming weeks.

A provision in the House version of the 2009 defense authorization bill would direct the Pentagon to study the feasibility of creating such a database by March.

It is amazing, but true, that there is no central repository of this kind of information.

Some veterans groups are leery of the idea, however. They say they worry that medal citations may reveal details of classified missions. But this is easily solved: As is already the case, some medals citations may be classified and withheld from the database with a suitable notation.

Another concern is that a public database would make it even easier for fakers to trade on the heroics and honors of others.

This also is a non-issue. The very point of a medals database is to provide a central authority through which individual claims can be easily verified or debunked.

Certainly, there are logistical issues to be resolved — first and foremost, how to ensure that all data from each service makes it accurately into the database.

So is determining how far back to go. The further back, the harder the task will be, as the records of earlier generations of veterans are kept largely in paper form in a National Archives facility in St. Louis.

These are exactly the kinds of issues the Pentagon should address in a feasibility study.

But there should be no doubt as to the basic need for a national database of valor awards and recipients. Heroes and their acts of gallantry should be celebrated, not hidden in obscurity.

DISCUSS: The need for a database of award recipients