No, there is a differance. They are not in a hostile environment. The Pentagon should, they were deliberately targeted by AQueda. That idiot who killed the one soldier did it as not part of the OBL War against the US. He was an idiot that is a loser and did it out of shear desperation so he can feel like he “belongs” to a group somehow..unfortunately, its AQueda, but he doesn’t.
I am not sure that you are right about that ma bell. Those two soldiers were killed by a guy who was recruited to Jihad and trained in terrorism in Yemen. He came back to the US with the express purpose of attacking the US military and Jewish targets as well.
He has a Somali passport, yet had never been to Somalia and was born and raised in the USA.
He was clearly part of some Jihadist apparatus or network. He didn’t get to Yemen on his own. He was recruited and told that was where he needed to go to get training. And someone got him a fake passport. He didn’t make it in his dorm room at Tennessee State.
This war is not just against OBL or even Al Qaeda. Hell, we killed and captured Hezbollah operatives in Iraq after all.
The fact that the perp was a US citizen should not be relevant to whether those two soldiers get Purple Hearts. Just as the servicemen and women who were killed/wounded at the Pentagon on September 11th got Purple Hearts, those two soldiers should get Purple Hearts.