I don't know if being in the media spotlight ='s a heroless society in a broader sense (though I think it rather interesting anthropological/sociological observation worthy of discussion) but I can say I agree with the statement to a certain degree from anecdotal evidence.

Did everyone see the movie Jarhead? Good movie, fair movie, accurate movie in a lot of ways. But I contend that the reason that movie got made was because it fed into some preconcieved Hollywood ideals about war and about what an acceptable "hero" is. Usually it is along the lines of: 'idealistic but articulate young man goes to war out of sense of duty. After experiencing the horrors of violence the hero undergoes a watershed moment and leaves a wise, less bellicose person who contemplates man's inhumanity to man in Hemmingway-esque style.' This is a Hollywood hero worthy of media spotlight.

My personal experience with 2 MoH winners left me with a slightly different version of the difference between those who live a warrior ethos and the soldier-poet (as archetype I mean) that story tellers and movie makers and to a degree journalists seem more comfortable with.

I can't remember my battalion Command Sergeant Major's name because no one ever called him by it. If they didn't call him Skelator they called him Smage (a bastardization of Saregeant Major and the name of the dragon in The Hobbit). He was 6'5" and like 120lbs with coke bottle glasses and so black he seemed to absorb light. He'd been in Vietnam and in Iran when the hostage rescue failed. He couldn't speak without using the f word--I think literally--he was violently homophobic, violently liberal-phobic because liberals=communists and communists=the viet cong who he never called anything but gooks and twenty years later he still hated the American-left for pulling him out of Vietnam where he had done 5 ("five") tours. Despite this the man gave off energy like a high voltage wire, again literally. You could stand next to him and you would have an overwhelming urge to touch the sleeve of his BDU like the hem of the pope or something. When we got called to the Chez border during state disolution and no one could make up their mind how the thing was going to be handled everyone was always like "if it goes down I hope Smage is here." I have no idea how the man got the MoH because the Battalion CO said he didn't know cause the record had been sealed as Classified (I swear I'm not making this up) but he'd "heard" it involved walking through machine gun fire like Superman. Sometimes for fun he lift his shirt and show his anorexic body where the he had six or seven bullet holes.

The other MoH I spent time around seemed a polar opposite. He was 5'2" and "pill-o-pino". He was called Brigade CSM "Happy" because he was cherubic and gregarious and always laughing, like a favorite uncle. In Vietnam the Army taught him Vietnamese and sent him out to inflitrate the VC(again, I swear I'm not making this up). He'd talk about being hit by American troops in an ambush and having to shoot back to not tip off the VC unit he was with. He got the MoH for calling in an airstrike on himself when he discovered he was in the bodyguard entourage for a North Vietnamese general and a Chinese advsior who were about to slip away into a place called Magic Moutain. He did it, he lived, no one knows how: they gave him the medal.

You'd think he'd be perfect for news cameras. Unfortunatly he had a slightly Osberger-condition when it came to talking about violence. He thought it great fun to talk about waking up in the middle of night and crawling along an enemy barracks in a tunnel and slitting the throats of men you had just eaten dinner with. If they'd interviewed him he'd probablly told them "funny stories" about hooking VC scouts to radio batteries so his LRRP team didn't walk into an ambush. Then if someone would have pointed out the conflicts that had with a "greater ideological struggle" he would have laughed like he'd heard a joke.

This is anecdotal. I've hardly met all the MoH winners and most who write books are a little better tempered in social appropriateness. But I do think this point is true: when dealing with "heroes" storytellers, whether press or hollywood, the media is much more comfortable with 'average man performs extrodinairly once' than with 'reincarrnation of dark age warrior lives the life Darwin intended.'

As a side note I think in writing this is played out in the genres of fantasy. Our media (as a collective) likes those fresh faced High Fantasy heroes. Meanwhile CSM's Happy and Smage would be more at home in a Karl Edward Wagner or Robert E Howard story.

Again, this isn't meant as a definitive argument, just as my personal observation based on specific, limited experience. Which is why when I hear things like "Support The Troops, Bring Them Home" I always raise an eyebrow thinking about Happy & Smage. They never said thank you and and remained bitter men that America supported them by bringing them home from Vietnam.

Well said Mike and I won't land in an argument about the political impact of left leaning media and cultural norms as viewed by a good portion of Vietnam vets that had remained in the military that I talked to. They almost always used a short hand of ignoring Nixon as a victim of polls driven by Jane Fonda.EDIT: I could resist this little jab but...I gather from your posts that you were alive and kicking during this time. Do you attribute your difference in memory of the period also lived by the good Smage to your superior education, intellect, discernition? That is why would I think Smage doesn't grasp the history he lived but you have properly grasped the history you lived through? Just curious.

The point is rather that the your reaction and the reaction of pundits and academics (meant as genral statement and not in perjorgative) is pretty spot on when I talk about the actual personalities of some of the more successful war-fighter soldiers.

That is, there is a fundamental gulf in make-up (I'm led to speculate) between those arguing about war and those who make careers/lives in the midst of it.

That is not 'they right you wrong' but more of something along the lines of what Army General Thorson when speaking of Marines: "There are two kinds of people who understand Marines. Marines and the enemy. Everyone else has a second hand opinion."

Your response is my point. You wouldn't like Smage. Happy would creep you out. You are hardly an anomaly, which is also my point. I can only ask you to believe my hyperbolic-sounding statement that if you were in danger you would look to them as if to a lodestone.

What it takes to be a 'hero' is often unpalatable characteristics to people in the media or politics.

How much better a liberal (humanist not political left) heart that performs then contemplates the horror than the blue-collar ability of the minute-to-minute survival mentality.

Your gut reaction to my description was exactly what I was trying to illustrate in my experience--but I hasten to add again that these are not all medal winners I spent time with nor is my antedoctal experiences much more than exactly that; anecdotes.

I have to admit I lean towards a ends justifying means if we allow it to exist on a continuum and not as a hyperbolic dicotomy. Means are by definition transitory while ends are the remainder.

Theoretical ideology has a way of sliding so far that one can become impotant or irrelevant by doers. Besides I strongly deny the argument of moral equivilancy: i.e. they do something & we do something so we are the same or no better. I find it a slipery slope argument more concerned with ideological purity than with gaining lasting results. As a matter of IMO only.

For example only: Sadaam killed Iraqis: he was a villian. But the US is killing Iraqis also: ergo we are villians or no better. Nonsense.

To remove actions from intent and context is a good way to end up completely irrelevant to any situation. I'm not saying you are all these things Dave, just explain how I considered different ideologies then chose a side while realizing no belief system is without flaws.

EDIT: I thought this a better quote for Ghandi: "Better an end with horrors than horrors without end"--Greek peasant motto in uprsing against the Ottoman Empire