for members of the military.

YAh, ribbons and medals are the uniform decorations, but very few of the medal winners, claim them as their own earnings.

Mostly medal of honor winners lament the dead.

Warriors want feathers in their bonnet and medals on their chest. Soldiers, REAL soldiers want to survive.
And survival depends upon different priorities in decision making that winning medals.

Hegseth is ignorant of his duties and incompetent to carry our those duties. That's Trump's trademark. It keeps attention off him and on his appointees.

It is a mindset of being willing to commit violence when necessary.

Your understanding of close combat is correct. It is a knife fight but the participants use rifles and hand grenades rather than knives. Rarely it will develop into literal hand to hand combat and in that case the saying about the size of the fight in the dog will be the determining factor of who wins.

rather than the biggest dogs.

All the folks I've talked to could be wrong, or they might on balance be right.

what everyone you have discussed this with has said.

About 20% of the military are in direct combat. That is, they are the ones shooting at the enemy. The remaining 80% are in support functions. I live in Coronado, Ca. where the Navy Seals train and I have know a couple of them, some lived in our small condo complex, as well as seen them running on our beach. They do not have the Rambo body like you see in the movies nor are they overly tall. For the most part, they're around 5'9" tall, slime build, fit but not overly muscular, are soft spoken, and don't show their "manliness."

Hegseth is a gym rat with a frat boy mentality who takes too much testosterone. I've met a number of people in the military like him who have a gym body but not the endurance to do physical work for hours. I never had or wanted a gym body and if you saw me you'd say on the heavy side but not overweight. I did a lot of warehouse work lifting and moving boxes and material by hand. I and my buddies would set up our field hospital for exercises and we'd be working for hours in hot weather while they gym rats needed breaks every 30 minutes.

A the OP said, " It's about the outcomes of training, experience, and confidence in yourself, the soldiers around you and support available from company and battalion resources. It's about coordination of covering fire, and careful movement under it." It takes brains and the ability to integrate with with people of different background and to coordinate laterally and vertically with units in the chain of command as well as with other commands or militarizes.

What the military doesn't need are frat boys like Hegseth but leaders who understands the military and their needs.

As Sargent Garcia told us in NCO school... none of us can do our job without the members of our unit.

And after every mission, there will be yet another mission , in which the experience, knowledge, and trust of the members of our unit will be very important

Than he does about performance. Why else would he have his “dressing room” at the pentagon. Every hair in its place for the camera.

Every time he tries to act tough, he looks like a clown, and then some. Assholes like him think the military is there to blow shit up and break things. Real soldiers, sailors and airmen learn that the military is the LAST resort when diplomacy does not work. This administration doesn’t know how to use diplomacy, because they are stupid people who are in so far over their heads.

I'm sure they'd rather have soldiers who will do what the say, when they say, against whomever they say, up to and including American citizens.