WASHINGTON — President Obama awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously on Wednesday to a Green Beret who died to save his fellow soldiers in a pitched battle with insurgents in Afghanistan last year, the latest in a series of such tributes at a time of domestic debate about the war. Staff Sgt. Robert J. Miller’s unit was ambushed on Jan. 25, 2008, during a predawn reconnaissance mission in Gowardesh by enemy fighters who assaulted them from above. Under withering fire, Sergeant Miller charged forward and drew fire away from his fellow soldiers. Even after he was shot, he continued returning fire to allow his team to pull back.
Ultimately, according to a Pentagon account of the seven-hour battle in Kunar Province, Sergeant Miller killed at least 10 insurgents while saving the lives of 7 American and 15 Afghan soldiers.
Mr. Obama presented the medal to Sergeant Miller’s family in a ceremony in the East Room of the White House. “You gave your oldest son to America,” he told the soldier’s parents, Phil and Maureen Miller, “and America is forever in your debt.”
Sergeant Miller’s seven brothers and sisters also attended, as did some of his fellow soldiers from Company A, Third Battalion, Third Special Forces Group from Fort Bragg, N.C.
“These soldiers,” the president said, “embody the spirit that guides our troops in Afghanistan every day: the courage, the resolve, the relentless focus on their mission to break the momentum of the Taliban insurgency and to build the capacity of Afghans to defend themselves.”
Sergeant Miller, 24, who was born in Harrisburg, Pa., and grew up in Wheaton, Ill., where he was a high school gymnast, joined the Army in 2003. He had learned to speak Pashto and was on his second tour of Afghanistan when he died.
His was the third Medal of Honor for service in Afghanistan approved by Mr. Obama, even as the country debates the future of the war. Mr. Obama has vowed to begin pulling some forces out next July.
