While I am currently working on a deeper issue concerning veterans issues I thought today I would cover a lighter yet still important topic: Stolen Valor. Pretending to be in the military or the police is not necessarily a new phenomenon but with the sweeping speed in which news travels the world these days “fakers” have become a prominent fixture in the military veteran community. Not a day goes by where I don’t see a picture of someone dressed up in full military uniform proudly displaying a vast array of awards and ribbons; The problem with these photos is often the awards being displayed would have been impossible to earn. The typical case involves a person claiming to have been a Navy Seal with five combat tours, earning several combat awards for bravery, while only serving for 4 years or so. The problem there is it takes years just to become a Seal and combat tours can be long. Generally these people have just enough knowledge about the training or deployment cycles to demonstrate just enough facts where someone who didn’t know any better could be fooled. I actually ran into somebody while in DC who claimed to be a part of the Bin Laden raid and to be perfectly honest almost had me fooled. Real professionals (particularly those with combat experience) don’t see themselves as heroes and often keep quite about the things they have done or the awards they have earned unless asked about them. That is not to say occasionally a veteran might be boastful and entertain the local bar with stories about their service (I have been guilty of this myself a few times) but generally we like to be considered the quiet professionals who do the job because we were told to.
Stolen valor has become so rampant that a law has been passed making it a crime. The Stolen Valor Act of 2013 makes it a crime to fraudulent claim certain things about military service. The Act primarily focuses on fraudulent claims of having earned awards for bravery and combat service such as the Medal of Honor or a Combat Action Ribbon. What the law does not do is make it a crime to lie about serving at all (which it should), but obviously the enforcement mechanism for that would be difficult. The full text of the Act is available here. Moreover, as the law stands it is only a crime when the fraud is done for monetary gain. This is in part because of the Supreme Court case in US v. Alvarez 132 S. Ct. 1421 which declared a prior version of this law unconstitutional under the 1st Amendment. An additional limitation with the Act is its penalties are generally just civil or criminal fines. If it were up to me it would be life in a super-max prison, but obviously that doesn’t make practical sense.
The weaknesses in the law have sprouted numerous veteran groups to establish ways to seek someone’s record for themselves. One fairly popular site, StolenValor.com, has a wealth of information about the subject. There you will find numerous cases where false claims were made and the claimants were busted. My personal favorite way to fight this issue is with the “make him/her famous campaign.” This is a social media strategy where certain groups (that I won’t name here) post pictures and information about those claiming to be things in which they are not. Eventually what happens is their personal accounts get slammed with comments and some even get shut down. While the Stolen valor Act is a good start to solving this type of problem, the veteran community will probably continue to police itself and bring down those who would seek to dishonor our service.