Editor's Note: This post has been sitting for awhile and I still feel it is a valid point to make. It is broken into two parts with part two posting tomorrow at noon. I also recently had an interesting experience that reminded me of two things:
Why I left the Marine Corps for civilian life
Why I will always be proud of my service but it will never be the pinacle of my life.
I won’t get into details of what happened, but needless to say it was related to these individuals continuing to have a feeling of control or superiority over me even after I have left the Marines and nearly a decade since I worked with them. It was interesting to say the least.
Rant over, read on and let me know what you think of this post.
A number of articles have been popping up lately on news sites about a worrisome topic:the divide from our all volunteer military and essentially the rest of the world. I have personally had a few people ask me what I think about the issue and I have spoken with a few veteran and non veteran friends about it. It has even come up in job interviews.
The gap between our military and the rest of the population is indeed worrisome. The topic was kicked off by comments that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly made following recently about what it was like to lose his son in combat. If you don’t know General Kelly’s story you should:
Marine general's son laid to rest at Arlington
The article that piqued my interest to write this post is here:
For some veterans John Kelly's remarks add to a worrying military civilian divide
Before I dive into this I want to say that as a veteran and as someone who feels strongly about veteran issues I will never discount the service of any service-member regardless of rank, branch, time served, where they deployed, etc. We should all be proud of what we did and feel comfortable speaking about that service with those that did not serve.
However, I am going to some hard truths out there:
1) Being a veteran does not make you more qualified than a civilian for ANY job with similar but non-military qualifications.
2) If you think “they aren’t a vet they just don’t understand” that is a problem, especially if it is in relation to a job.
3) The fact that someone did NOT join the military has no impact on who they are. It wasn’t the path for everyone, and that is ok.
4) There are ~350 million people in the United States. There are ~1.3m service members and ~20m veterans. It is not the job of civilians to assimilate to you or to understand your unique background; it is up to you to help them understand where you came from and assimilate into civilian society.
Stay tuned for part two on Thursday.