Quote Originally Posted by Cavguy View Post
... the SMA was right. Too few people ever get to meet a serving military member. Traveling in uniform has allowed me to share my experiences with lots of people who would never hear firsthand accounts of our current conflicts or what it means to serve. In some cases, like Schmedlap's above, it changes preconceived notions about the type of people in the military.
Definitely agree in regards to the attitudes towards Soldiers in uniform. That was actually one reason that I stopped wearing a uniform while stationed in DC - it was getting out of hand. (I was also a magnet for weirdos who wanted to give me suggestions for alterations to our national security strategy - thanks, I'll stop by the Pentagon and sit down with SECDEF on my way to work to pass along the advice of the random weirdo on the subway).

Now that I'm out, I've met a lot of new (civilian) people who, upon learning that I was in the Army, began to ask questions. The questions astounded me. They primarily pertained to waterboarding, torture, mistreatment of detainees, whether I have "flashbacks", whether I have PTSD or if I know anyone who does, why Soldiers are on food stamps, whether I was ever on food stamps, and lots of similar issues that only reinforced my impression that the media does a horrible job of informing the public and of shaping their perception about who chooses to serve and how servicemembers are treated. I've told some people how much money I was earning after taxes, how much I was able to save while on deployments, and explained that I am eligible for so many benefits that I would need an advisor just to consider all of them. I've found it difficult to convey just how stupid the torture/abuse questions are. There seems to be a common impression that detainee abuse is common, that it is perpetrated by many members of the military, and that interrogations are physical and conducted by just any member of the military, at any time, for any reason. Maybe Hollywood is partly at fault for this, too. Explaining that any of those things are uncommon and that most Soldiers never even come into contact or proximity to detainees doesn't seem to register in many peoples' minds.

I suspect that such bizarro perceptions of the military in the minds of people who have never served and who don't know anyone who has served can help to foster the misguided assumptions that underlie the article in the original post.