DoD passes on proposed Army Combat Action Badge changes

Amen to that, sir!

Sir, I hate saying this, the last go arounds in Iraq and Afghanistan led to a lot of people being exposed to enemy fire on convoys and bases. If a Convoy gets ambushed is that anything less than an Infantry soldier hearing a few bullets go buzzing bye. Warfare is changing, and the classic set piece maneuver units may well be a thing of the past. For the record, I wish the Army had gone the way of the Marines and adopted a ribbon and been done with it. It would of made life easier.

OK. Wouldn't the "problem" be solved if the Army did not send non 11B's into areas where the soldier would hear loud booms or bullets speeding by their ears.

So says the Cyber Warfare Officer wearing a CIB.
My response would be that infantrymen should consider reenlisting for actual combat arms if they can qualify.

The notion that the recent actions have been the FIRST war where it was virtually 360 dangers during deployment" is obviously the impression of a youngster who never studied recent military history. But that's not surprising because the US Army had an entire generation of "leaders" who did everything possible to wipe out institutional knowledge of the past. Yes, it is only since 2001 that we have invented terms like "360º battlefield" and "asymmetric warfare" but I can assure you that many of us lived through fighting an asymmetric war on a 360º battlefield, only to be told that our experience was of no value to the Army because the only enemy that mattered was the Big Bad Bear and the only future battlefield was the Central European Plain west of the Fulda Gap. The last 20 years proved those "leaders" wrong.

I do agree with you that the CAB is just another Participation Trophy -- but so is the CIB

The only problem I see with making the CAB retroactive is that there is no way to maintain the supposed standard of "actively engaging or being engaged by the enemy" although I'm not at all sure that this standard is really maintained across all units today.

However I do have to correct you that not ALL other badges are retroactive. The criteria for retroactive award of some recently created badges have been carefully tailored to exclude most older veterans who clearly should have been included.