Among other things, sure. I'd say it's similar to firefighters and police officers to an extent, except for the fact that, in the army, deployments can be brutal.
I'd like to make a distinction between missions. I'm not here to badmouth other missions, but the medal for the mission in Afghanistan has sharp edges. It's different from the other medals, and there's a reason for that. My English-speaking brothers, who taught me to speak English, called the other medals “drinking medals”. If you stay in the army long enough, you'll get them. However, the mission in Afghanistan was brutal. It just wasn't the same.