Well everyone is allowed an opinion. It's just not really cool to accuse people of cowardice and imply that they they are hiding because they choose not to reveal their identity on the net.
The deal is this, on any given topic there are comments, you either agree with them or you don't. If any of those comments affect you in the physical world where you need to act on them then that's the only time you should really care whether the person behind the comments has any "validity" or not. I.e. If someone comes on the forum and begins to trash your business anonymously. That would obviously be a case where someone is hiding behind anonymity to attempt to harm you. How you personally deal with that is up to you. Some people say, no problem, bring it on, but I guarantee you that if someone were to get really nasty it wouldn't be so easy to ignore. Now, this is where community comes in. If you hve a good rep with the community then the community will defend you and the troublemaker will usually be dealt with. But this is only because you have earned the respect of the community not for who you are in real life nor for what you do, but for who are online to your group.
No one has a face here. I don't even know what your "avatars" look like because I don't load them to save bandwidth, nor do I care. Your face is your personality. If it's ugly then that's how people will think of you, if it's respectful then that's how you are viewed.
Like I said before, no one cares about being taken seriously unless they are in some kind of transaction with another person. Otherwise it's all ego and center of attention preening. If someone needs to be serious then they will choose to reveal their identity in order to get the validation they need to transact as they wish.
I was in the Air Force. You could have opted out of whatever your MOS was if you weren't cool with it. I was assigned to become a cop. I didn't want to become a cop and so I didn't. Many of friends over the years also elected to retrain in other fields. I can understand your attitude as relates to your experience. I think it's a little harsh to project deception onto people who choose to remain anonymous in internet forums. As long as the anonymous person is not doing anything that harms another person then there is no deceit in not stating who you are and where you are.
If someone's intention is to network here then they will rightly choose to disclose who they are. Some people come here just for entertainment, they don't care to do business with anyone else on the board. They just want to goof off and make funny comments here and there without disclosing who they are. And that's fine too. Again it's pretty harsh to accuse everyone who chooses privacy of deception.
How to make friends, learn about new things, and do business while anonymous? Try reading about Second Life. There are people in that world who do all these things without ever disclosing to anyone who they are in real life. They have deep friendships, they build cool stuff and learn new things together, and they do business in a fantasy currency that has real world value. How do I know this? My ex-wife was a part of that world, almost fully immersed. I dipped in now and then. Those folks take that life and each other very seriously.
I don't know what your experience level is in INTERNET forums. I have been on them since 1996. You have probably never had the pleasure of being cyberstalked by an unrelenting troll. I hope you never do. One of those experiences is enough to regret sharing your real name with the world on the internet. Most boards these days are moderated so trolls are less of a problem but there are still plenty of reasons to protect your privacy. And, also, for a lot of the reasons you state, plenty of reasons to use your real name.
So goes the famous cartoon, "on the internet nobody knows you are a dog." They only see if you act like one.
and this: 
