Not sure how you wouldn't mean it as an insult but, okay. Having spent the last several years with the Army, whenever they started *****ing about the AF I'd usually remind them that "life's about choices," smile and move on.

Fact of life, AF has been in Gulf since 1990. I know all sorts of non PJ's/SOF who spent 5-7 rotations in the Gulf well before to 9-11, something most people like to ignore.

I was also an Infantryman, a soldier. There was a moment of dawning comprehension one day when I suddenly determined that the vast majority of people on my post lived lives that in no way even remotely resembled mine. I suspect that once you move past the "every Marine a rifleman" line you might realize that the life of a Marine admin clerk has far more in common with the life of an Army or even AF admin clerk than it does with a Marine grunt.

QOL and stress aren't the same thing. The USMC does take a bizarre pleasure in making sure their lives are a miserable as possible in terms of living conditions, that isn't synomous with stress. How about doing multiple deployments coming home and finding out the AF is downsizing more than 10% and your career field just got axed? That's stress.

You speak of the AF as though you have a clue what you're talking about. We'll skip over SF. Do you know much about the LRS career field? Go find one of them and ask them how their lives are. AF guys all make fun of cops but take a look at their deployment rates and living conditions down range. Or how about your average Herc crew dog, spending 135 out, 115 back, going on four years now. Little bit of stress on the homefront. Do you know what a TACP is? It isn't SF yet they live rather stressful lives, and the vast majority of it downrange. How about my favorite, AF transporters? We have a small unit where I'm at with a couple KIA and far too many purple hearts considering what they enlisted for.

Is any of that equivalent to a Marine Infantryman? Other than the TACP probably not, though the war is completely different 24 hours or 100 yards away. Step outside the grunt comparison...and really it's pretty clear you didn't bother to let the fact you'd no idea what you were talking about get in the way of opening your mouth and sticking your foot in it.