What is your experience--and opinion--of Americans who never served in the military?

SSG Leaver, good points. However, I don't resent anyone. I am not particularly fond of people who criticize things they do not understand; are unwilling to understand; do not support it, and yet benefit from it. For perspective, imagine being in a very senior leader meeting when a top person says" Oh, he's one of those morons from DOD. They have to bark orders to get anything done" (this from a manager who demands people blindly follow his directives)...or--"let's not check the block to open up the list to veterans--we know how much trouble they are"...(this from a person who freely brags about running off to Canada to avoid the draft, then getting scholarship money to complete 12 years of college in the U.S....that is what I am talking about. I also hear from people--close people--who complain about government workers all being incompetent, not working hard--and most of them have never worked for gov. Most are self employed.

SGM, I agree that resent is too strong a word, I just couldn't think of a good one that fit. Trust me, I also get irritated with those who speak ill of the military (as well as other topics) with absolutely no clue about the reality of it. Eventually though I just accept that there will always be "special" folks around whose deficiencies we will have to work around. Arguing with them rarely produces positive results, they just entrench themselves further into their misconceptions and blurred reality.

CW5 Montgomery, wish I could agree completely...I do see and hear anti-veteran talk from gov managers that makes my skin crawl. I do what I can to combat it.

I've heard that from others on RallyPoint, but it hasn't been my experience. Granted, the places I've worked as a civilian (all within DoD/Army) have many veterans, so there would likely be less of that sort of talk. Many of the managers are veterans themselves, so it wouldn't make sense for them to be anti-veteran. I guess I'm living a sheltered life in this regard.

Frankly, I was surprised at a few of my teen-aged cohorts who thought they did themselves such a big favor by managing to, one way or another, "beat the draft". Yeah sure, they didn't have to do all the madness, like do all the stuff a recruit has to do in training, like get up after 6 (5, if you had firewatch) hours of sleep and do a morning run before breakfast, or crawl on your belly under barbed wire, keeping your rifle clean, with machine-gun bullets whizzing over your head.
But they also did not get the chance to not only serve their country, but learn about the people who ARE that country.
I was city kid, from the New York City area, and therefore categorized as a "gangster" (per the DI), while others, from rural areas, he democratically classified as "shit-kickers" or "sister-humpers" (I think depending on how far South the individual hailed from).
We very soon learned that despite our religious, racial, and regional differences that we were all Americans , and that we could work together to not only survive our training, but actually impress our slave-driving masters. Not only that, but geography did not always affect a lot of our views on what was right and what was wrong about the way our country was being governed.
Before I left for Parris Island, a veteran NCO told us recruits "You would not pay a dime for the opportunity to go through recruit training. After you have done it, you would not take a million dollars for the experience, if you could sell it to someone else."
There is something missing in the life experience of those who have not served. They will never know what they have missed.