‘Warrior caste’: Is a public disconnect hurting military recruiting efforts?

We do it to ourselves as well. We wear dysfunctional veteran shirts and talk shit about college kids not knowing what we went through, like no shit brother we signed up so they wouldn't have to know. We harass folks in public that we SUSPECT are stealing valor and post in on Facebook, well when people see this in public Id imagine half the time they don't even know what stolen valor is and think we just enjoy talking shit to each other in the most egregious ways. We get into bar fights, berate people who think different than us online and claim that civilians don't get to have an opinion cuz they "didn't fight for their country" and even if we think to ourselves "what a tool" we don't confront them and stick up for people who are exercising their 1A rights. I tried this on a Facebook post onetime and stuck up for a civilian against this vet a little younger than me and you'd of have thought I just slapped his mother the outrage that came from him and his friends was shocking to be directed at a "brother in arms". A civilian friend of mine was threatened by a veteran in person because of his viewpoint on the war I finally decided to stop the argument cuz I was getting hot by this "combat vets" actions and come to find out he was some POG that had never left the base. Now there is absolutely a disconnect that originates from the civilians, but I believe that while in the Vietnam era the blame was on the citizens, I think this generation has taken a good amount of good will and slowly started to erode it with our actions, not entirely on us but more so than any other time in the past.

Very good topic MAJ Montgomery Granger we need to broaden our horizons when we think of the ideal soldier/airman/seamen/marine. There are large untapped demographics that 1)love this country 2)will fight for this country 3)need their country and 4) are actually overqualified for most of the jobs that are currently unmanned.