From David Hackworth's appearance on Booknotes in 1989:

"This tragedy that occurred started in 1946 when we took our Officer Corps and started this business of making everybody a diplomat and a warrior which ended up under Maxwell Taylor when he became Chief of Staff. Our Generals became corporate generals rather than the fighting generals of type that won World War II. The Ridgeways and the Pattons and so on."

Hackworth on military decorations:

"... take Admiral Crowe who is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. On his jacket it's ablaze with medals. 31 of them. But there's not one for a combat deed. They're all having-been-there awards. You're-a-good-guy award. You-moved-some-paper-across-your-desk-in-a-neat-way award....

Just like when Admiral Crowe perhaps appears in front of Congress, those are his credentials, and those Congressmen don't know they are just having-been-there awards. When he says we need this they believe that he knows what he's talking about from the standpoint of being on a battlefield. So I think that we've kind of put our award system at a cross purpose. Grenada -- there were 7,000 men on that island. They gave 8,000 awards. There were 200 enemy Cuban soldiers or so on that island. And they gave 200 awards for valor. One per enemy soldier.

... I think we need to go back and clean up our act on awards and just give awards to soldiers. The final line on awards is to me the only award ... that really means something to warriors is the Purple Heart and above that, the Combat Infantry Badge. That means I've been there."