In today’s Opinion Journal page, Ralph Kinney Bennett has a moving story about Paul Ray Smith, who received the Medal of Honor following his death. In April 2003, Smith held off hordes of Iraqi soldiers to protect his own platoon, killing nearly 50 of them, but also being killed in the process.

There is no doubt that what Smith did took courage and a willingness to die in battle. However, I take a very different approach. First, Bennett acts as though Smith’s death was a tragedy, but that the death of the Iraqi soldiers was good. We read about Smith’s family; we do not read of the wives, children, and other loved ones left behind when the Iraqis were killed.

No doubt, Sgt. Smith was a brave and perhaps principled man. We need people of principle at home, as government attacks our liberties, steals our property, and kills and imprisons people by the scores. We don’t need people of honor carrying out the foreign policy fantasies of the neocons (emphasis upon “cons”). While the Iraqis at that very moment were the greatest threat faced by Smith and his platoon, in a very real sense, they were not the enemy at all.

Instead, we will honor Smith (as perhaps we should), but the people paying honor to him in D.C. are people who have no right even to tie the man’s shoelaces, much less present his widow with her late husband’s “Medal of Honor.” Honor, indeed.