Special Forces

In the HBO Series I've been watching lately, Band of Brothers, describes the preparation and battlefield exploits of a group of men from the 101st Airborne. Their training includes strenuous physical conditioning, cross-training of soldiers and seemingly endless additional training on the various aspects of being a soldier. As far as knowledge of military matters, anything I know is all what they call, book-learnin' based upon years of hero worship of our military, but the training they gave to those guys sounds an awful lot like SF type training.

Americans have a love affair with it's elite military units. Other countries have them, but nowhere near as many, and they aren't held with the same level of awe as they are in the US.

A Collection of Thoughts, with her Top 10 List of Movies, reminded me of one of my favorite movies, Last of The Mohicans. One of the reasons I like this movie so much is because "the Mohicans" are portrayed as being elite fighters with incredible skill at marksmanship, hand-to-hand combat, etc, while at the same time exhibiting the type of chivalry we expect from the good guys. Another, even more popular movie, Star Wars, features the portrayal of the Jedi Knights. With their extensive training and unique philosophy they appear to have a lot in common with real-life elite military units. At the apex of Star Wars' popularity, one of the most popular toys was the plastic light saber used by the Jedi as their weapon of choice.

I believe that all cultures revere elite groups to some level, (I'm mostly referring to military groups but there are probably some good non-military examples too.) but Americans tend to place greater importance on them. We worship individualism and elite military units help to put an individual face on our soldiers. It's part of the reason why the US Army went with its Army of One ad campaign.

The reasons why these types of units are so cherished, I think, has to do with:

• Our desire to live vicariously through them. I have a relative who is a Green Beret. He spent a few years out of the regular army as a realtor, got bored with that, and went back to become a part of this elite unit. When he was a realtor I thought he was a nice guy but that's it. Now...I practically worship the guy.
  
• Our need for heroes in an increasingly post-modern world. Let's face it. There aren't too many pro athletes we can look up to anymore. Who else is there?
  

I suppose there are other reasons. I'm going to see if I get any interesting comments on this post and then, when I have something better than a 28k modem and a tiny laptop keyboard, I'm going to come back to this topic.