According to Tom Ricks’ definition of the concept, I am now a veteran. Yay me!
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Joshua Foust – author of 1801 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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You can match these credentials?
“Adam L. Silverman, PhD is the Social Science Advisor for Strategic Communications for the US Army Human Terrain System and was deployed in Iraq in 2008 as a Field Social Scientist and Team Lead for Human Terrain Team Iraq 6 and served as the Socio-Cultural Advisor for the 2BCT/1AD.”
Well, do you think Ricks called him a vet because of his PhDs or because he was on a human terrain team for a few months?
If it’s the former, then a lot of social scientists who have spent time in Iraq and Afghanistan are “vets.” If it’s the later, then a lot of civilian contractors who never see combat are “vets.” I qualify for both under those terms. But neither of them really qualify the person as a “vet.” This is nothing personal on Adam, but he is not a veteran on par with a soldier on a year long combat tour.
The most important similarity, to make it extremely clear, is that Adam’s a contractor. I don’t think that’s standing out enough.
Indeed. Very much so. I so got distracted by seeing how Ricks’ definition of a vet was so broad, it encompassed a whole range of obvious non-vets, I forgot the basic one: neither of us are vets in the sense of people who have worn the uniform because we both are contractors.
I didn’t mean any disrespect, I would just consider someone to have been on the ground embedded with a team to be a “vet” of Iraq, though not necessarily a “combat vet.” (I think he would have said “combat vet” for an actual soldier). The important thing for me is he’s differentiating between an armchair commentator (people like me) and someone who’s actually been there and spent some time in the trenches.
JTapp, we have other words to describe those people. He could have used any number of descriptors to distinguish Adam from what is commonly understood to have been a veteran. There is too much ambiguity in referring to him as a “vet.” I think it’s telling that you made the distinction between “vet” and “combat vet” and then describe the former as having also “spent some time in the trenches.”
Or we apply additional descriptors: “vet of the Army’s experiment with social science advising,” “vet of the sociological study of Iraq,” vet of something else.
And again, by that definition: having a background in social science and deploying to a warzone in support of the U.S. Army, I am a vet. And that is silly. I don’t deserve that title, actual veterans do.