{"id":22964,"date":"2011-09-16T06:47:06","date_gmt":"2011-09-16T11:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=22964"},"modified":"2011-09-16T06:47:06","modified_gmt":"2011-09-16T11:47:06","slug":"above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=22964","title":{"rendered":"Above And Beyond The Call Of Duty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sergeant Dakota Meyer is the first <em>living <\/em>Marine to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/09\/16\/us\/dakota-meyer-marine-is-awarded-medal-of-honor.html\">earn the Medal of Honor in the war on terror<\/a>:.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In the course of six hours [after an ambush in Afghanistan in September of 2009], survivors said, Corporal Meyer and his driver, Staff Sgt. Juan J. Rodriguez-Chavez, led five fights into the ravine toward Ganjigal. Four times they helped recover wounded men, first Afghans who were pinned down and later Americans similarly trapped.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/images.politico.com\/global\/news\/110915_medal_honor_ap_605.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"605\" height=\"328\" \/><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>After the corporal freed Captain Swenson, the captain joined him in the fighting while an Army platoon nearby declined to help. On the last trip they recovered the remains of three Marines and a Navy corpsman. By then, according to the Marine Corps\u2019 account of the fight, Corporal Meyer had killed eight Taliban fighters and stood up to several dozen more. (A fifth American later died of wounds suffered in the ravine.)<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDakota later confessed,\u201d the president said, of the fighting in Ganjigal, \u201cI didn\u2019t think I was going to die. I knew I was.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The key criterion for the Medal of Honor is heroism &#8220;above and beyond the call of duty&#8221;. \u00a0That&#8217;s a phrase the world of business &#8211; and Hollywood, naturally &#8211; have devalued to the point of meaninglessness &#8211; for civilians, anyway.<\/p>\n<p>It means doing things that are far, far beyond what one is ordered, or reasonably expected, to do.<\/p>\n<p>The sort of thing that makes a sergeant deserve salutes from four star generals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sergeant Dakota Meyer is the first living Marine to earn the Medal of Honor in the war on terror:. In the course of six hours [after an ambush in Afghanistan in September of 2009], survivors said, Corporal Meyer and his driver, Staff Sgt. Juan J. Rodriguez-Chavez, led five fights into the ravine toward Ganjigal. Four [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[131,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-war-and-peace","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22964"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22968,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22964\/revisions\/22968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}