Handing out medals to Tenet and crew is no surprise, really. Indeed, this phenomenon is actually of venerable heritage and generally well-understood. In an army, if a unit performs a mission with gross incompetence, the commander has two options: court martial the soldiers or award them medals. Since charges of gross incompetence and court martials reflect badly on everyone in the unit's command chain, whereas medals reflect well on both the recipients and their superiors, the obvious response is to award everyone medals.
This phenomenon is explained in further detail in
this book.