Military personnel see civil society as more dishonest, more self-indulgent, more corrupt, more disloyal, less disciplined, and more materialistic than military culture.  This highlights the sense military people have that the general population does not really understand them and, despite supportive gestures and words, does not understand the sacrifices they make for America. 

When asked whether or not the term "honest" applied to military culture, 81.3 % of military respondents said it did.  Asked the same question about civilian culture, only 42.1% agreed.  72.1% replied that the term "self-indulgent" did not apply to the military.  90.6% believed that it did apply to civilian culture.  Only 19.4% believed that military culture was corrupt while 83.7% reported believing civilian culture was.  With respect to loyalty, 93% held the military as a loyal culture while only 21.4% believed the term applied to civilians.  Only 33.4% reported the military as a materialistic culture while 94.2% believed that term applied to civilians.  Not surprisingly, 93.6% held the military as disciplined while only 8.8% held civilian culture in the same light.

In and of itself, this difference of opinion about the characteristics of military and civilian culture is not critical.  It would not be surprising to find that a profession held its own culture in high regard.  Indeed civilians hold many of the same opinions, although not with as extreme a difference as reported by the military sample.

As we have reported earlier, the military is quite critical of civilian leadership,especially the past two administrations (Clinton and Bush).  While the military firmly believes that civilian control of the military is the right way to go and even more firmly believes that a military ought to follow orders, it also is quite sure that civilian leaders ought to listen to and take good military advice.  When the military believes that good military advice was ignored and then led down a bad path, disgruntlement will arise.  That was the mythos that arose from Vietnam; that civilian bungling and meddling in purely military matters led to defeat.  Should things go badly in Iraq or Afghanistan, that mythos will be reinforced and it will take longer than a generation to recover.  Combine that mythos with a sense that the military culture is somehow superior to the civilian culture and we could find ourselves with some severe pathologies in our civil-military relationship.

So, what does all this mean?  It means that whoever is President must find a way to "win" the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.  By winning we mean a way to eventually withdraw without looking like we ran and being able to leave a reasonably stable environment.  Even better if we can find a way for the rest of the world to believe that we left under good circumstances turning security in those two countries over to competent authority.  If we leave those countries in a mess and appear to abandon them, the military will be quite sure that they were abused and used for faulty political purpose.  They will take a long time to forgive that.