Your son is way too defensive.
You see, here's the problem. It's not what he said and its not his explanations of what's going on. The problem is the thread itself. You didn't say this was your son. You didn't say who it was at all. You didn't provide any background info at all. We didn't know who was being interviewed. We didn't know who was interviewing, either. No link to any story was provided. We didn't know who this was or what was going on.
Therefore, we automatically had to be suspicious and approach this with a grain of salt.
Your son is also attacking people he doesn't even know, calling them "outsiders" and saying they "just don't understand." Does he think you're the only person in the entire country with a serving family member? How would he know whether or not people here have loved ones serving?
I think that part of his frustration is that they were supposed to go to Iraq and instead were sent to Afghanistan where they are sitting around not doing much of anything. Of course, this may change when winter is over. They don't do much fighting in winter in Afg.
As to the outsider remark I think he was differentiating from the basically understanding comments he was getting from people who seemed to have military background, and the complaints without addressing the issues that he got from others. Personally, I am very upset that Afg. is supplying one half of the world's heroin supply. I wonder if anything meaningful will be done about that?
I didn't start out by saying this was my son as I did not want to influence the discussion one way or the other. I have made enough comments at other military threads, that people who follow them were probably aware of that.