Staff Sgt. Salvatore “Sal” and Jennifer Giunta on their wedding day in Mexico November 2009. She has stood by his side through two deployments and the confusing, surreal and bittersweet whirlwind that followed his Medal of Honor announcement by President Barack Obama in September. Giunta calls her his rock and his hero.
WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Nov. 16, 2010) — As President Barack Obama hangs the pale blue ribbon holding the Medal of Honor around the neck of Staff Sgt. Salvatore “Sal” Giunta in a White House Ceremony today, Giunta’s wife Jennifer will be at his side, offering her quiet support, just as she has done throughout his two deployments, and especially during the whirlwind of media interviews and VIP meetings that followed the award announcement in September.
He is the first living servicemember to receive the nation’s highest award for conspicuous gallantry in combat since the Vietnam War — for stopping two terrorists from kidnapping his wounded friend during a fierce battle in Afghanistan in October 2007 — which he said doesn’t make him a hero, and she said makes her proud, of course, but doesn’t change the way she feels about her husband.
“Sal’s still the same guy he was before,” Jennifer said as Giunta noted he still has to do the dishes at home.
“It holds a lot of meaning,” she said about the medal, “and I think that he’s a hero, but I think that everyone who goes is also a hero, and he did what he did, because that’s the type of person he is.”
They met soon after Giunta enlisted and was stationed with the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team in Vicenza, Italy, where Jennifer was doing a college internship, and they were soon inseparable, so much so that she didn’t want to go home at the end of the summer. He would be deploying the next winter and she knew – she knew – she had to find a way to make it work.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Jennifer Giunta.
Now-Staff Sgt. Salvatore “Sal” Giunta with his now-wife Jennifer as he prepared to deploy for a second time in summer 2007 – to Afghanistan’s dangerous Korengal Valley, where he would rescue a wounded friend from two enemy fighters and earn the first non-posthumous Medal of Honor since Vietnam.
Letters and phone calls
“It’s hard, you know, to know that he was going to go,” she said. “I just thought, ‘I’m going to write a lot of letters so that we can stay connected in some ways, so that hopefully when he gets back, we feel like we weren’t apart as much as we really were.’”
After he returned that first time and she finished school, they knew they had to be together, so figuring she’d find a job, Jennifer left her family and friends and moved back to Italy. She never expected that Giunta would be stop-lossed and not only sent back to Afghanistan for 15 months, but sent to one of the most remote and dangerous areas of the country, the Korengal Valley, nicknamed the ‘Valley of Death.’
They weren’t married yet, so she didn’t have access to the full benefits or support system that spouses enjoy, but Jennifer didn’t want to go home to Iowa and be even farther from Giunta and the little news she could get. So she moved in with a friend who was an Army spouse, and they leaned on each other.
Because phone calls were infrequent at best and even then lasted only 15 minutes, and “when a month or two goes by, 15 minutes is like a second,” she said. She and Giunta wrote letters again to stay in touch — letters that meant everything to Giunta as he sat in his primitive firebase on a mountainside in Afghanistan, getting shot at every day.
“It was good to be able to have her there and hear her stories and be able to enjoy some life other than those mountains during that time, to get her letters. You know, she’d spray it with some perfume and I could smell the perfume. I had a little pillow and in the pillowcase, I’d just slide all the letters in my pillow, so I’d sleep on her perfume and her letters. And it matters,” remembered Giunta, the tough paratrooper who took on the Taliban singlehandedly, but whose face softens when he looks at his wife during interviews.
Fate
It had been a long, hard deployment for both of them, but it wasn’t even halfway over on Oct. 25, 2007, when it suddenly got much worse. Jennifer got a frantic, tearful phone call from the wife of one of the men in Giunta’s unit.
“She told me that (Sgt. Joshua) Brennan – she told me that Brennan had died. And she told me that Sal was a hero and that she didn’t know when I was going to hear from him,” Jennifer said, crying. “I think the next day or two he called, and I was so happy to hear his voice. You build this really tight connection with them, so tight that you can tell their mood just by their voice. I could tell that he wasn’t doing well, but I could also tell that when I hear that tone of voice, he doesn’t want to talk about it.
“He said, ‘How are you doing?’ I kind of told him what I’d been doing and maybe five minutes went by and I said, ‘Look, I know what happened. Are you OK? I’m so sorry. Are you OK?’ And he said, ‘I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.’ I said, ‘Shut up. I know you’re fine. I know you’re physically OK, because you’re talking to me right now, but are you really OK?’ And again he said, ‘I’m fine. I’m OK.’ It was too soon for him to want to talk about it. He was talking about it to everybody else who was already there and he called me because he wanted to kind of be distracted,” she continued.
In fact, it’s only as he’s done media interviews in the past few months that she’s learned the full story of what happened on that mountainside in Afghanistan, and the battle that claimed not only Brennan, who Giunta fought so desperately to save, but also the platoon medic, Spc. Hugo Mendoza. And as much as she loves him and supports him, she can’t fully imagine what it must have been like for him to go through something so tragic – no one but the other Soldiers who were there can.
The Medal of Honor
The deployment was so rough, that after their initial, giddy reunion, it took about six months for their relationship to get back to normal, Jennifer explained, adding that today their relationship is stronger because of everything they’ve gone through.
The world may call Giunta a hero, but he shies from the term, saying he was just trying to help a friend who would have done the same for him. He doesn’t deserve any of these accolades. But Jennifer — Jennifer is one of his heroes, and she has kept him grounded throughout the media whirl and the spotlight and the attention that he never wanted.
“My wife is awesome,” he said. “I call her my equal, but you know, she’s smarter than me. She’s my rock. She’s the person that I’ll complain to. I can tell her and it doesn’t come off as complaining and she’ll understand and she’ll help me through it. She’s what keeps me on the level, because I can come in and meet different people and we can do whatever, but I need to have that ‘this is my normal,’ and when I go to her, she brings me down to this level and then we can talk. Regardless of what anyone says or how many lights are on us or how many cameras are pointed at us, she’s what grounds me.”
In fact, the spotlight is something that both prefer to avoid, and many of the spouses Jennifer knows on Vincenza came up to her after finding out about Giunta’s award in the news, wanting to know why she never said anything.
“I’m very proud, but I’m not a very boastful person. I want them to like us for who we are and not this medal. So I would just like to continue to be the person I was. I haven’t changed. I still talk to them in the same way,” she said, adding that the bond between Army spouses has been a powerful force in her life. “We lean on each other. You want to always be supportive. I would hope that if anything happened to Sal, that I would have somebody there to help me. It can be a friend. It can be a complete stranger. You get that connection with people who have to go through the same thing as you (and) you almost don’t have to say anything.”
Neither Giunta is sure what the immediate future holds, only that both would like to continue their educations, and that they want Giunta’s Medal of Honor to represent the sacrifices of every servicemember.
“This is for everyone who sacrifices for their country,” Giunta said. “No one made us do this. We all raised our hand at one point or another and said, ‘I’ll do this. War, OK.’ And then some of us do it again and again and again, and it’s for all those people. Everybody.”
(CNN) – The Republican Party won decisive control of the House in this year’s midterm elections, but it appears less than half the country is aware of it.
According to a new Pew poll, only 46 percent of those surveyed correctly identified that the Republican Party won the House as a result of the November 2 elections. But it’s not all bad – 75 percent did know the Republicans performed better than the Democrats, it’s just that many aren’t aware exactly what the party won.
Fourteen percent thought the GOP won control of both the chambers, 8 percent thought Republicans won just the Senate, and 27 percent didn’t know one way or the other. Five percent meanwhile thought Democrats maintained control of both the House and Senate.
The questions about the election were part of a larger poll quizzing American’s knowledge on current events. Among the poll’s other findings:
38 percent correctly identified John Boehner as the incoming House Speaker
16 percent correctly said more than half of the loans made under the Troubled Asset Relief Program had been repaid
15 percent correctly identified David Cameron as Prime Minister of England; the same amount said it was ex-BP CEO Tony Hayward
26 percent know Android is the operating system by Google for mobile phones
The poll surveyed 1,001 adults by telephone between November 11-14 and carries a sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
KABUL — Afghans in two crucial southern provinces are almost completely unaware of the September 11 attacks on the United States and don’t know they precipitated the foreign intervention now in its 10th year, a new report showed on Friday.
NATO leaders gathered in Lisbon for a summit on Friday where the transition from foreign forces — now at about 150,000 — to Afghan security responsibility will be at the top of the agenda, with leaders to discuss a 2014 target date set by Kabul.
Few Afghans in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, Taliban strongholds where fighting remains fiercest, know why foreign troops are in Afghanistan, says the “Afghanistan Transition: Missing Variables” report to be released later on Friday.
The report by The International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) policy think-tank showed 92 percent of 1,000 Afghan men surveyed in Helmand and Kandahar know nothing of the hijacked airliner attacks on U.S. targets in 2001.
“The lack of awareness of why we are there contributes to the high levels of negativity toward the NATO military operations and made the job of the Taliban easier,” ICOS President Norine MacDonald told Reuters from Washington.
“We need to explain to the Afghan people why we are here, and both convince them and show them that their future is better with us than the Taliban,” MacDonald said.
That, I would think, is why it’s somewhat alarming. If we’re supposed to be helping these people and they don’t know why we’re there, that does make the mission just a little bit harder.
If Keith Olbermann’s viewers know what’s best for HIS show, why don’t you the people know what’s right for America?
Less than a month after he removed the benchmark segment “Worst Person In The World” from his MSNBC television program, Keith O. has relented to the will of the people. (And by “people” I am referring to the faithful following of the troubled cable channel.) Starting tonight, the old standard of name-calling and hate-mongering returns to MSNBC as WPITW is back! (If you are reading this Keith, or having it read to you by a minion, I secretly crave to make the list. Even if I’m just the Bronze medal winner, that would make my day and be a huge boost to my Right thinking street cred.)
Seeing that popular opinion carries sway with someone so often seen as inflexible, I wonder how Keith and MSNBC would now feel about the following controversial topics.
The proposed mosque to be built near Ground Zero – Time Magazine’s survey showed that 61% of America thinks it should not be built and 70% believe that continuing with the plan would be an insult to the victims of the attack. Based on these numbers, would the Olbermeister stand up and say that the American people have spoken and the mosque should be moved? Doubtful.
The Obama Healthcare Bill – After narrowly passing earlier this year, and facing possible repeal or defunding by the 2011 Congress, the healthcare legislation is still generating significant negatives. Reuters recent online survey shows that 64% of respondents are not pleased about the bill. Nearly 2/3rds of the people want this legislation radically changed or undone. Where does MSNBC’s pitbull stand on this?
The (ironically titled) Employee Free Choice Act or “Card Check” – The unions claim this would be a great thing for the country. The people seem to know differently and have expressed their opinion many times over. Evidence the results posted online from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “The poll, conducted by Voter Consumer Research, showed that 61% of respondents nationwide oppose EFCA, which would make it easier for unions to organize workplaces. Some 48% said they strongly oppose, and 47% said they personally would be worse off if more workplaces were unionized.” Since union honcho Richard Trumpka practically has a locker in the MSNBC air talent lounge, I won’t even pretend to think there could be a change of opinion on this one.
Cap & Trade – The President himself warned us that his proposed program of capping emissions and trading carbon credits would “necessarily cause energy rates to SKYROCKET” – so it is no shock that the American people are less than thrilled about the prospect of this shady plan. A national survey from the Institute for Energy Research revealed that Cap & Trade was narrowly beaten when 70% of the American people were against it. WAIT… only 70% are against it? That’s hardly a reason for the government to forge ahead with plans to impose financial punishment on the people.
I could go on and on with cases of the people thinking that the government is going the wrong way by imposing their will on the people who elected them, but I doubt it would change opinions of the brain trust at MSNBC or Keith. They are not about to admit that the people want something different from what they are being force-fed. No sir, these myopic media monsters are still convinced that the Democrats midterm election disaster was due to the economic malaise that still haunts the country and not a rising tide of rational thinking trying to reign in an out of control government.
Speaking with TPM after a panel on civil rights at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention on Thursday, Kobach said he would have to wait until all the reports came in.
“There have been a few cases where I’ve heard allegations of voter fraud, but we’re just a few weeks out from the election,” Kobach said.
“I think the bottom line is voter fruad is an issue in which we should all be interested in stopping,” Kobach said.
Kobach also said that the example that he gave of a 108 year old voter still on the rolls — a man who turned out to be 78 years old and very much alive — showed that voter rolls needed to be cleaned up.
This afternoon, during an interview with KTVA’s Matt Felling, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said that she would not oppose repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell “as long as as long as it is supported by the troops as long as it doesn’t hurt the performance, the morale, the recruitment”:
MURKOWSKI: I have said that I would work to make sure that as long as it is supported by the troops as long as it doesn’t hurt the performance, the morale, the recruitment, that these are all things we want to take into consideration. I think we will see this play out in this report. If in fact, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is included in the defense authorization and we get to a point where we can move that bill through, I would not oppose the Defense Authorization Bill because Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell — the repeal of it — is included within it.
Watch it:
Murkowski went on to say that the country was at “different point in time.” “There is clearly a level of acceptance within our communities, at all levels, of supporting and providing for that level of equality for the homosexual community and I think it’s important to recognize that,” she added.
Interestingly, hours after taping this interview (sometime before 4pm EST), Murkowski appeared on CNN’s The Situation Room (after 6pm EST) and suggested that she didn’t know how she would vote on the issue, possibly hinting that her vote would depend on an open amendment process. “I don’t know how it is going to be presented in the upcoming lame duck in terms of that defense authorization bill, and whether or not we will get to that,” she said. “It is indeterminate at this point in time.” Watch it:
General Sir David Richards, commander of the British military and former NATO commander in Afghanistan, gave an interview to the Sunday Telegraph that is extremely important and easily misunderstand. The headline statement has been Richards’ remark that a military victory against al-Qa’ida and the Taliban is not possible.
Many have seen this quote is one more example of a disturbing trend in which the West lacks the willingness to attain victory, the patience and staying power to fight the revolutionary Islamist threat whose very existence is denied by all too many. This is certainly a real issue and a reasonable concern but Richards isn’t joining that kind of thinking. If we listen to what he’s actually saying (and not saying) we can understand the situation better.
The great, secret weapon of these radical forces is a refusal to compromise or give up. No matter how long the battle goes on, how many are killed, or how their countries are wrecked, these extremists will go on fighting. This gives them two tremendous advantages:
-First, they can wear down (or think they are wearing down) their enemy, outlasting them. The idea is one of winning victory by getting the other, stronger side to give up because its people fear death or don’t want to pay the financial price of the conflict, or just lose interest.
-Second, they can play on internal defeatist forces on the part of the West. Just by making them kill your people, wreck your buildings, and inflict suffering, they can be made to feel so guilty as to abandon the struggle.
There are many in Western political, intellectual, and media circles who advocate appeasement, concessions, and even surrender. But this does not seem to be what Richards is saying.
According to his interview, Richards does view this is as a necessarily protracted struggle, his estimate is that the battle will go on at least 30 years may prove optimistic. He points out that military means alone cannot root out an idea.
Attempts by the West to achieve this were unnecessary, said Sir David Richards, the Chief of General Staff, who also defended the right of fundamentalist Muslims to adhere to beliefs which underpin their lives. He stressed that one cannot defeat ideas merely through fighting wars. Islamism, he avers, isn’t going to disappear, nor does he wish to challenge the right of “fundamentalist” Muslims to hold their beliefs.
Instead he puts forward a practical, functional definition of victory: contain the enemy, prevent it from attacking you. In his words:
“You can’t [achieve victory through combat]. We’ve all said this–-[General] David Petraeus [the U.S. head of NATO forces in Afghanistan] has said this….In conventional war, defeat and victory is very clear cut and is symbolized by troops marching into another country’s capital. First of all you have to ask, do we need to defeat it [Islamist militancy] in the sense of a clear-cut victory? I would argue that it is unnecessary and can never be achieved….
“I don’t think you can probably defeat an idea. It’s something we need to battle against as necessary, but in its milder forms why shouldn’t they be allowed to have that sort of philosophy underpinning their lives?
“It’s how it manifests itself that is the key and can we contain that manifestation – and quite clearly al-Qa’ida is an unacceptable manifestation of it.”
I think a lot of what Richards says is reasonable though it also contains some dangerous implications. Richards is obviously not advocating retreat since he says that the NATO operation in Afghanistan has been largely successful and opposes withdrawing in the near future. The problem, rather, is that he is (understandably) focusing on his job of being a British general and fighting wars.
Before continuing, however, it is necessary to point out a potential disaster in Richards’ words that reflects serious errors in Western thinking. If the West focuses only or overwhelmingly just on blocking attacks against itself in the short-run that will lead to more attacks in the long-run.
The idea that the revolutionary movement’s main front should be launching terrorist attacks on the West is an al-Qaida strategy, not one of the revolutionary Islamists generally. This fact means that Western military and intelligence forces are engaged in fighting al-Qaida. But al-Qaida is not the main strategic threat. It didn’t take over Iran, the Gaza Strip, or large parts of Lebanon. Al-Qaida didn’t wage civil war in Algeria or Egypt. The main strategic threat is not scattered terrorist attacks but a political transformation of the Middle East, countries with huge territories, tens of millions of people, and billions of dollars in resources, all of which can be used to spark a lot of future wars and attacks.
Consequently, if the top Western priority is preventing attacks on itself, the second top priority should be keeping Islamists from taking over other countries and using them as bases for further expansion. When Islamists take over somewhere—as in Turkey or the Gaza Strip—it invigorates that ideology, gives it additional financing and safe havens, and inspires many thousands to join their ranks. Coddling Syria, partner in the biggest Islamist alliance, has the same effect.
All non-conventional wars against irregular forces that are fighting for an idea have their special problems. In 1945, many leaders in the Allies doubted that capturing Berlin or taking Tokyo would wrote out Nazism or Japanese warrior fanaticism. In fact, though, this was achieved because those ideas were seen to be disastrous and costly failures.
The Middle East’s modern history is not so different from this kind of pattern than people seem to think. True, some basic concepts—expelling Western influence, destroying Israel, finding some miracle solution to become wealthy and powerful overnight—did remain over decades.
Yet the specific programs that were building mass movements and inspiring hundreds of attacks were discredited. These discredited ideas include: Nasserism in the 1950s-1970s era; Ba’thism as a regional movement; Marxism; Cuban-style guerrilla warfare; the belief in Saddam Hussein as messiah; the belief in quick upheavals after Iran’s revolution; and faith in Usama bin Ladin as messiah. Each time an idea was defeated, some years of relative quiet went by and the scope of the problem was often reduced.
To prove a movement and ideas has failed, the first step is to ensure that it doesn’t win a quick and easy victory. The second step is to defeat it soundly and throw it out of power where possible, as did happen in Afghanistan. In other places, though, the West did the opposite, for example, saving the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip.
The third step is to root out the movement in a serious manner. The West doesn’t have the stomach to do the dirty work that would be necessary to succeed here. And given the fact that the present-day problem is within the framework of Islam, it is probably impossible and certainly undesirable for them to do this.
So who can do it? Answer: Other Muslims who have a vested interest in doing so. The Saudi, Algerian, and Egyptian regimes, with all their shortcomings, have been willing to fight in this manner.
The Palestinian Authority has been too weak to do so and too eager to use the Islamists for its own purposes against Israel. The Lebanese government has been too weak while lacking Western support and facing an enemy which enjoys full Iranian-Syrian backing. In Afghanistan, the government—partly due to its sensing Western faintheartedness—also seems inclined to try to make a deal with the Taliban.
The final stage is an ideological assault on the enemy ideology. But given the “infidel” nature of the West, its ignorance about Islam (albeit an ignorance that is the exact opposite of what it is usually accused of holding), and refusal to acknowledge how Jihadism and revolutionary Islamism are deeply rooted in the texture of Islam, this also can only be accomplished by other Muslims.
The real moderate reformers are too weak; Muslim phony moderates and apologists for the radicals try to hide the truth. That leaves governments in Muslim-majority countries, some of which—as noted above—are incapable of tough action. Moreover, even the strongest Muslim-majority country regimes seek to use this weapon against their own enemies, and thus keep it alive.
At least, however, the West can understand the nature of the enemy and the basis of its appeal. And if must understand that radical Islamic views and practices on its own soil are likely to lead to revolutionary Islamist movements.
Richards is saying that the Taliban, al-Qaida, and revolutionary Islamists aren’t going to be dissolved into nothingness by Western military action. That’s true. But there are other ways of attaining victory.
Whenever I’m tempted to attribute wisdom to the Will of the People, I remind myself of things like this:
Pew Research: “While 75% identify the Republicans as the party regarded as doing best in the midterms, fewer than half (46%) know that Republicans will have a majority only in the House when the new Congress convenes in January. About one-in-seven (14%) say the GOP won both the House and Senate; 8% say they won just the Senate; 5% do not think they will have a majority in either chamber; and 27% do not know.”
I don’t expect the mass public to have a lot of specialized knowledge about politics. Given how much time it requires to be truly informed and the incredibly small payoff it gives, it’s not worthwhile for most people to make the effort. But, damn, I don’t know how you miss this sort of thing.
Some of the other things on the list — Google’s cellphone software, the rate at which TARP loans have been repaid, and even the British PM — are a little more understandable.
