We have a bad habit in the Special Operations community of inter-service, inter-unit, and even intra-team rivalry.  Whether it is Special Forces against SEALs, “white” against “black” SOF, Rangers against SEALs, any military SOF unit against CIA paramilitary forces, Army special missions units against Navy special missions units, or one SEAL platoon against another platoon at the same SEAL Team, we all—at one time or another—can get carried away in the high-school-like game of pitting ourselves against a similar, but inevitably different, SOF unit.

Not that this is always a negative tendency, either.

Sometimes such rivalries create useful competition, which drives one unit to be better than the next, thus moving all of SOF to improve itself, one rivalry at a time. It is like free market competition in some ways. You want to be the best, so you train harder and work toward perfection, which then makes all SOF units more effective fighting forces.

And yet, like true free market competition, when left unregulated, such rivalries can sometimes take things off the rails.