As a 12-year post-9/11 veteran with 7 years at a Tier 1 SOCOM unit and currently a successful BD guy at a Top 5 SV unicorn, your post is filled with misinformation, generalities, and is frankly offensive. Many of my brothers and sisters from the SOF world have successfully transitioned to the civilian world and are crushing it. Are there dark times - yes. But we either choose to let them define us or choose to rise above and move ahead with our goals.

Your comment about bankruptcies and poor credit is not even worth responding to.

The world under SOCOM is pretty big, and I've only experienced some of it, second hand via direct family as well as family friends. I may be painting with an overly broad brush, but I'm telling it how I experienced it.

The bankruptcy and credit problem may not be as relevant anymore due to technology, but it was absolutely relevant in the time my father was active. The technology we rely on to maintain our finances (automatic payments, mail, pervasive internet and phone communications) didn't exist, and if it did, it wasn't anywhere near the combat outposts where they would be deployed to for several months to train local militias. It is really hard to pay a bill if you can't be sent a bill, call to ask about a balance, send a check via mail, or have your bank take care of it for you.

I do know at least one former Ranger who was pretty successful in a civilian job (logistics at amazon), but I've known far more that couldn't hack anything out of the military (apart from security contractors that is). Maybe my sample is small and not representative, but that's just the way I've seen it. Sorry if I offended you by the generalization, it wasn't my intent at all.

I'm laughing my ass off at the fact you have actually posted your little resumé in a comment. The guys that do stuff usually aren't the ones to float what they've done in order to be taken seriously, especially a "Tier 1" guy.

But, there are absolutely dudes no matter how high up who are not smart in how they handle their personal finances. Didn't Matt Bissonette (aka Mark Owens) write a novel about his time in DEVGRU and what took place on the UBL mission because he didn't have any money?

edit: Thank you for sharing this, btw.

It is really interesting. Military culture, especially elite special forces, breeds an extremely fascinating brand of human. Tough, practical in a basic sense, experience of human condition at a visceral level, extreme stress, indoctrination to violence and causing death, and a required level of training that you can interpret as supreme confidence.

The lessons you can learn from these extremes are imminently applicable to day to day life if you read between the lines. I completely get the desire to want to be a part of a special forces team. The sense of belonging, elite physical conditioning and knowledge that you are actually the best at something without the usual asterisk we all place on ourselves and skills.

There are tons of negatives as you have mentioned. Divorce rates are extremely high as you mentioned. What makes you good at being an elite soldier makes you really bad at being a companion to other humans that aren't also an elite special forces soldier serving along side you.

We ask a lot of these folks, mostly men. Interestingly most special forces men self select and are what I consider "fully developed" (age 25+). They have usually been in the military since they were adults. Young kids just joining the army often lack the life skills to cope with things. I suspect if you could not join the military until you were 25 there would be a lot less PTSD as 25 year olds have time to develop life coping skills in more humane environment. So special forces men (at least for us forces) really WANT to be there and have had time to get out. Regardless of the politics behind it these guys mostly stay in because they believe in their country and their brothers in arms. They often vehemently disagree with the politics of many situations.

No apology here for the jingoism and all the negative things that come with a militaristic culture, but it is fascinating to study these people and the extremes of training and conditioning they endure and what that can ultimately teach you about life. Heavy reading between the lines required, but the hacker crowd often dismisses these guys far too quickly because of all the negatives and militarism surrounding these guys. This culture exists, isn't going anywhere, and can teach a lot.

Anyway, I guess this was all to say, I share your dual fascination/repulsion with this culture. It is just interesting, and as hackers we should always learn about interesting stuff, even if we disagree with it.

I agree with much of what you say, but I do take issue with the idea that "what makes you good at being an elite soldier makes you really bad at being a companion to other humans that aren't also an elite special forces soldier." Certainly the time required to develop and maintain elite fighting skills takes away from the time one could spend on personal and familial relationships, but there's nothing intrinsic to the makeup of an elite soldier that detracts from one's ability to relate to other people. I have a family member who is retired from a special forces unit with all that entails (lots of deployments, medals, injuries, lost comrades, etc.) who is a good husband and father, patient, calm, resourceful and helpful, and generally the kind of guy you'd like to have as a neighbor. I think he had some advantages that many special ops guys don't always have such as very strong family ties throughout his deployments and not getting married until after his deployments were over, but he's certainly not the only one from his unit to do well in retirement.

I've been friends two former Navy UDT team members (precursor to the SEALs), both of whom were Korean war vets, and one former SEAL. One was an old girlfriend's dad and the kind of person you describe--unassuming, very decent family guy who I liked a lot. I had no idea he'd even been in the military, much less done insane things deep in North Korean territory, until I asked his daughter how he'd come to start a diving services company.

The other former UDT vet was my high school writing teacher, a sort of Yoda figure. He covered the clock in his classroom with a picture of the Buddha, so you got a little jolt of patience training every time you snuck a glance at the clock. Whatever small writing talent I have started with him.

Third was a friend's cousin who who'd left the service in his mid-thirties. For a while we were drinking buddies. We road bikes together for a while too, but that didn't last long--he was in such phenomenally better shape than me, despite training half as much, it was a mismatch. We were a mismatch in general--he was a bro's bro and I was like his token hippie friend. But we had fun boozing around for a while, and he was in no way damaged goods.

Speaking of booze, one amazing thing about Sadler was his ability to write so many potboilers while drinking so hard. I don't drink anymore, in large part because my productivity just went to shit when I was drunk all the time. Maybe it's more feasible to write purple prose than code when you're loaded.

It depends.

The way I treat my family is different because they're my family.

I don't usually enjoy interactions with new people because we differ so greatly in our priorities, focus, and sensitivity to violence.

If you lived on Mars for 10 years you probably wouldn't have much in common with someone who was born and raised on Earth. Some Martian's would fair better than others of course. New friendships might be more a factor of their gregariousness or how much they miss Mars though.

I guess I should have clarified when they are in active duty. Back in civilian world / outside of that environment, yeah sure, can be pretty normal folks.

I don't go around advocating violence, but neither do I shower it with the contempt that's been fashionable ever since the late 60s when showing up at a Vietnam protest became a viable way of getting laid. (There was even a poster - "Girls say yes to boys who say no!" meaning who dodge the draft. I digress.) I basically just try to understand violence and war as something that's been part of the human condition since day 1. So I flinched a little at the way this writer seems to write off Sadler and his struggles in such a casual and condescending way. And also at his unnecessary use of qua. That is the sine qua non of sanctius quam tu.

Yeah. It is interesting though. I think the classic PBS documentary "anyone's son will do" is great. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DShDaJXK5qo I think war in the industrialized world is almost purely political. Wars in the modern day are arranged by old men and politicians and fought by young men. I don't blame the young men, but I think it goes back to some aspects of human biology and how young men see themselves and are manipulated through patriotism and other political forces to volunteer (or be conscripted) into a military to serve political ends. In a time before two tribes could communicate and apply some reason to things, force was the only way to resolve things. Force and violence is still a crude, simple, and effective path to changing human behavior so it of course is used, but if it is ever used between super powers the world is basically over. Anyhow, I digress.

So then when you're done with your military career, you find yourself on the one hand having mastered yourself and done a lot of stuff you didn't think you were capable of. And on the other hand, some of that stuff is kind of bad, especially with that modern twist you're talking about - I would call it modern disconnection. I don't think there's anything in human nature that hasn't been extracted, distilled, modified and commodified by industrial society, and that leads to a lot of disconnection. Including with war and such. In the olden days, killing someone who was about to kill your family and torch your village etc. (things you felt connected to), was probably a lot easier to reconcile with your conscience, than nowadays killing someone for some faraway, disconnected political goal. Which eventually most of them realize as they get older - those military goals and missions, set by those at the top, are to some extent, arbitrary and capricious. I dunno, I would probably drink a lot too.

Nitpicking: One can say force WAS used between superpowers (Cold War, proxy wars) and we are still here.

Old rich men will always find a way to fight each other without destroying themselves.

The recent memoir of a UK SF and Security Service operator by Tom Marcus is an interesting read

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Soldier-Spy-Tom-Marcus/dp/071818484...

It takes a warrior breed willing to make the sacrifice. I doubt a single one isn't aware of the implications of joining