Whether today's troops in Iraq will be eligible for a campaign medal recognizing their service in a hostile theater remains unclear after Pentagon officials backed away from a plan to treat the mission as technically part of Operation Enduring Freedom.
A Pentagon official told Military Times last week that the roughly 1,700 troops serving in Iraq would be eligible for a Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal because their deployment would be bureaucratically defined as a part of OEF.
While OEF has become synonymous with the war in Afghanistan, its original definition dating from 2001 includes any global conflict linked to the attacks of 9/11.
On Monday, however, a Pentagon spokesman said the issue remains unresolved.
The Defense Department "is working closely with U.S. Central Command to determine the most appropriate means to recognize participation in ongoing operations in Iraq and Syria. No decisions have been made yet," said Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen, a DoD spokesman.
The expanding U.S. military campaign in Iraq and Syria still has no official name. And according to Pentagon regulations, eligibility for a GWOT-E Medal requires service members to deploy as a part of a specific operation for which that medal has been approved.
Today's troops in Iraq are not eligible for an Iraq Campaign Medal because that covers service only in the two named operations that comprised the previous eight-year mission there, Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation New Dawn, which ended in December 2011.
It's not clear why the Pentagon has given no new name to the current operations. In contrast, the effort to fight Ebola in West Africa was quickly dubbed "Operation United Assistance." And the deployment of nearly 1,000 troops to train in Eastern Europe last summer was titled "Operation Atlantic Resolve."
A Pentagon spokesman said the mission in Iraq and Syria may get a name soon, more than four months after new troops began flowing into Iraq to beef up security around the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.
"We believe that the mission now has grown to an extent, to a scope, where perhaps it's feasible to take a look at naming it, putting a structure around it that can allow for ... more dedicated staffing, resourcing, command and control, organization and resources," Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said Oct. 3.
"Those names are being considered at the combatant command level," Kirby said. "As far as I know ... there haven't been any names proffered to the Pentagon to consider, to weigh in on, to choose from."
Andrew Tilghman is the executive editor for Military Times. He is a former Military Times Pentagon reporter and served as a Middle East correspondent for the Stars and Stripes. Before covering the military, he worked as a reporter for the Houston Chronicle in Texas, the Albany Times Union in New York and The Associated Press in Milwaukee.
