Published on
Tuesday, December 10, 2019
by
TomDispatch
The U.S. Military on a Planet From Hell
Insignia, badges, and medals for a climate-wracked era.
It was Monday, March 1, 2032, and the top uniformed officers of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps were poised, as they are every year around this time, to deliver their annual "posture statement" on military readiness before the Senate Armed Services Committee. As the officers waited for the committee members to take their seats, journalists covering the event conferred among themselves on the meaning of all the badges and insignia worn by the top brass. Each of the officers testifying that day—Generals Richard Sheldon of the Army, Roberto Gonzalez of the Marine Corps, and Shalaya Wright of the Air Force, along withAdmiral Daniel Brixton of the Navy—sported chestfuls of multicolored ribbons and medals. What did all those emblems signify?
Easy to spot were the Defense Distinguished Service and Legion of Merit medals worn by all four officers. No less obvious was the parachutist badge worn by General Sheldon and the submarine warfare insignia sported by Admiral Brixton. As young officers, all four had, of course, served in the "Forever Wars" of the earlier years of this century and so each displayed the Global War on Terror Service Medal. But all four also bore service ribbons—those small horizontal bars worn over the left pocket—for campaigns of more recent vintage, and these required closer examination.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/12/10/us-military-planet-hell
