Wtf does being American have to do with anything? And no, it doesn't make a lick of difference. The given situation was a fighter pilot who shot down a commercial airliner under orders later at some point in his career being given a medal for some completely, 100% unrelated reason. Maybe he deserved to be tried for war crimes. Maybe he also deserved that medal. Can you see that this is not cognitive dissonance?
Not sure why the downvotes, but I think for the application software that probably 98% of us here write, it isn't as important as we'd like to believe in comparison to a person's life.
