Really? You who have never darkened the halls of the Pentagon, much less a base? What the heck would you know about who works in the Pentagon? I love armchair experts! I expect that the perfumed princes who sat out the Revolution said pretty much the same things about George Washington too, after they were nice and safe.
Vietnam ended up the way it did thanks to know-it-alls like you who hid from duty during the war and then elected treasonous Democrats who greased the skids for the enemy. We had the enemy beaten while back home we had enemy sympathizers pushing "peace" as a cover for supporting their agenda against our country.
I returned from the war and saw my country carrying the enemy flag in the streets - so much for your civilian "perspective" of the war.
Thank God people like you stayed well into the background during WW II or we'd be speaking German by now.
My interest in a military career began and ended in high school after the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. I decided that it would be the height of idiocy for anyone to put his life in the hands of a military command who would have men standing guard outside a military barracks -- in a war zone, mind you -- with specific orders to have no magazines in their guns.
I thank you for your service, but to be honest with you I've never understood this idea that it is somehow noble, or a "duty," or even a basic principle of liberty, for someone to put his life at risk in some Third World sh!t-hole just because some @ssholes in Washington think it's a good idea.