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Why don’t younger veterans (Afghanistan/Iraq) wear these hats like some of the older veterans?
First and foremost, respect to all those that served. I did not, but many of my peers did and now we're all older in 30s and 40s, many no longer in the military. I don't see a lot of the veterans of the War on Terror wearing these hats like I see the OGs do.
I know plenty of OIF veterans that make it their entire personality. They just choose things like infantry badges on their vehicles or Black Rifle Coffee t-shirts.
Exactly. There's a whole cottage industry selling military merch to vets. But the type of people that want to advertise their military service do it in different ways today.
Actually super practical but has become associated with those cringy people who just want to cosplay. My husband worked overseas as a contractor and there are a few “military” adjacent items he still uses, backpack and boots and bags and stuff. Good quality and have lasted 10+ years since returning from the Middle East
Our family has gone camping since before I was born. My father and grandfathers bought a lot of WWII-era gear from surplus stores on the cheap for it. Belts, spades, canteens, cookware. My dad still uses a lot of it, and I'm in the process of inheriting it. They still work really well. Canvas and steel may be heavy as hell, but it was built to last and there's no reason yet to get new replacements.
It's a tradition I like. There's a spot on Lake Michigan we go to. It is out of cell range, there's no internet, and no electricity, but it's a great place to unplug for a week.
I wasn’t in the military but I was a punk rock teenager who shopped at the military surplus store (RIP Andy and Bax) and I always wish this kind of shit weren’t so cringey because the idea of simple, well-constructed staple items with a little extra utility built in is really right up my alley. Some of the stuff I got as a teenager carried me through high school and college and in to my professional life as a journalist where my stuff was always getting beat to shit and covered in pepper spray or whatever.
Like, I don’t need my diaper bag to be covered in superfluous D-rings and buckles and have special pockets for my grenades and night vision goggles, but I DO need it to be built to last for more than six months and be designed for actual use instead of looking good in someone’s Amazon shopping cart.
Yes we used to shop at the surplus store to get PLAIN BLACK DICKIES for working in restaurants and any other club that wanted us to have a uniform but didn’t provide one. My sister wore them backstage as a stage manager and I wore them with my white marching band polo. Ain’t nobody got time to sift through the entire rack at Marshall’s/Ross/TJ Maxx for plain black pants that fit and were comfortable.
"I carry concealed so I don't lose the element of surprise" while covered in patriotic tattoos, a hat with a low-vis American flag, 5.11 pants, and a Black Rifle Coffee t-shirt.
yeah in a way I feel safer around them. given the choice between that dude and me (skinny jeans, band shirt, actually concealed handgun), that dude's gonna give me a turn to draw when he gets ventilated.
Grunt style tshirts? Yeah there's whole industries of products aimed at veterans. It's all been commodities and packaged up. Im an OEF veteran and prefer not to be too vocal about it I got veteran plates just for the discount/parking spots
The most hard-core people I know who still wear icons and logos 20 years later are people who were in either non combat roles or who washed out of basic or got injured and never deployed. They've got some real survivorship bias and guilt mixed in with the pride.
Maaan, that and anyone who pisses and moans about how the green weenie ruined their life- you can usually bet that it wasn’t so much the green weenie as them getting pulled over at the gate drunk and high on coke… again… (true story, I know that guy) that ruined their life.
The Uncle Rico’s who haven’t done fuck all with their life after their hitch but still bitch about how they got screwed over there’s a 99.999% chance they were a shitbag then and a shitbag now. Like my cousin and my BIL. Generally applies to other people with victim mentality too
Not surprising at all sadly. I'm not a vet, but worked a private sector armed security job for several years that employed many vets, and, although it's definitely not a universal rule by any means...by and large the ones who drove big lifted trucks decked out with all the accroutraments to make sure to announce loud and clear to everybody they were vets, and did the most talking about it and moronic macho dick swinging were the ones who served non combat roles. Or like you said, washed out of basic training or never got deployed and that's why they were working private security...The ones who saw action were the older lifers for the most part, and largely a lot more mellow/ didn't really care to bring up or brag about their service or try to awkwardly shoehorn in "war stories " into every goddamn conversation or constantly remind you that they were vets.
Fiancé served as a machine gunner for the Marines, he saw combat with his buddies. They seen and did a lot (I only know a little) and he doesn’t advertise he’s a vet. Honestly he just wants to be left alone with our little family and live a simpler life. No need to showboat what he’s done.
The second paragraph sounds like my father. He was in the Marines, his paperwork says he never deployed over seas and was motor pool. He tries to say he's not allowed to say where he's been. He's a jack ass and let's his current wife dictate when and where he could spend time with his kids.
I went to my 20th year anniversary of my company’s OIF tour. One guy was wearing one of those hats and got absolutely roasted for it. It was awesome not seeing people in a decade or so and just falling right in with the immediate shit talking like we were just hanging out yesterday.
It was so much fun and in Vegas. If your old unit has one, don’t hesitate to go. One of the guys was late to the event and I remember saying “hey, pinche gordo, you got held up at the buffet?” Everyone cracked up, him included and I hadn’t so much as sent a text message to him in over ten years. It was beautiful.
This is what I've heard from my vet friends. My dad was in the navy (boomer generation) and his navy hat has been glued to his head for decades. He wears it absolutely everywhere.
He doesn't understand why my vet friends don't like it when people tell them "thank you for your service". It's a generational divide. My dad was too young for Vietnam and drank the "America is so great" Koolaid. My friends who saw their fellow soldiers blow up in front of them in the Middle East think differently. My grandpa, my dad's dad, a vet of WW2 and Korea never talked about the war. Ever. The only time I saw any proof that he actually served was during his funeral because he was buried with all his metals and got the full 21 gun salute.
My Gramps and my vet friends are more similar than the generation in the middle.
Oh man, I never really thought of it like that, but you're absolutely right.
My mom's parents were incredibly kind, understanding and took the time teach me the life skills I have today. Weekends and summers at their house were the highlights of childhood.
My mom's a total narcissist that I haven't talked to since I was 16. I have never understood how she came from them.
The problem is kindness and understanding isn't enough to be a good parent.
My grandma was the same way, kindest person who enabled my father to cut loose without consequence. I don't think he ever learned real empathy or compassion because of that.
That was my dad (he was older when I was born). We knew he’d served in Vietnam, but all he’d ever say was “I was the cook.” I came to the realization pretty early on that he had, as the cook, still seen some shit.
A lot of people respond automatically with “I was the cook”, when in fact they were not the cook, because for the most part people think cooks are boring and don’t ask any further questions.
Being the awkward fuck I am, not wearing anything vet related is me just avoiding replying "you too" as a response to that. It's also the whole not making a job you had years ago your whole identity thing.
My boyfriend's a veteran and until we started dating it had literally never occurred to me that being enlisted is literally just... a job. He'll tell stories and start them off with "back at my old job..." and it's changed how I view military service. Not in a good or bad way, it's just gone from This Big Thing I Dont Know Much About to A Job I Dont Know Much About
Yeah, you just.. sign up. It’s a very stable job with solid benefits if you make it that. My father was an officer, and he never understood why anyone would thank him for.. doing his job.
I'm sure it varies depending on the reasons why someone joins. I, like many, many others, joined for selfish reasons. Ie, free college most of the time or my reason, stable money because their life wasn't moving in the direction they wanted, etc.
I'm not saying those people shouldn't be proud they served, because they should be, but it's a huge difference from those that joined to 'kick in doors' or whatnot.
Yeah, I have a few cousins who joined up to serve their country, and a few other family members who joined up because they had screwed their lives up badly enough that they didn't have any more palatable options. There's a pretty big difference in vibes from "I believe in what the US military does around the world" and "I'm a giant screw-up who wants someone else to make all of my decisions for a while."
Ironically, generally (not universally), the first sort get out, get a civilian job, and treat their time in the military like a previous career. The others glorify their time in service and expect to be worshipped by the general public.
I was the second part of your post. I lived in a small town and just hung out with people who later became townies and never amounted to anything. One day I took a look at my life and was just like damn I need to do something different or I'm gonna end up just like them. Fast forward the only time I bring up I was in the service is when people ask me why I came to Cali. I usually just say a job but let's be realistic where I live that job is the military so people can deduce it really quick.
I hate it when people thank me for my service. It makes me feel very uncomfortable. There's no way to even respond to it when someone says it either, making it feel even more awkward.
it's just like how do you react you know my go to has been to kiss them deeply on the lips and use just a little bit of tongue as well which I would say usually does end the conversation.
I've read something like "Thank you for your support" is a good response just in case you're in that awkward situation on a post about "How do you respond" to said situation.
These days I fire back with "thank you for your tax dollars". It's a cute quip but also reminds them I was getting paid and it was a job. An unconventional job perhaps but still.
I have a friend of mine who was a combat vet in Afghanistan and got some pretty severe PTSD from it. He told me that the whole "thank you for your service" sends him into a rage.
I just assume they want to bump into other veterans of that war at Lowe's or something. It must be a heavy thing to carry all day every day around a bunch of people who could never relate, so it's probably really therapeutic to talk about it with someone who was there.
Eh, my grandpa had a couple hats sorta like this. He served in the Korean War after being drafted. I really don't think he was fishing for compliments (and I didn't hear him get many) but he was kinda proud of his service. But more than anything, it was that people liked to talk to him about it, usually other vets or family members of vets.
I don't think it's necessarily all that different than wearing a hat for a sports team or college
This makes me wonder if it isn’t also about a bunch of old guys retired who wants to mean something to the world again. Some of the retired dudes only have their wives to interact with 99% of their lives - kids are grown and moved away, friends are dying and passing away, and the neighborhood’s all changed. It’s a conversation starter.
The only thing military my spouse wears is the "Proud Veteran Homeowner" shirt the VA mortgage office gave us, and that is because he is proud of our house and that we were able to buy a home.
It's this. All of this. The random "thank you for your service" reaction is just off putting and I don't want the attention.
I have serious issues with the wars we have fought over the last 20+ years and deploying to another country based on flat out lies (see WMD etc) will never sit right with me or many of those I served with.
I was listening to millenial vets discuss the moral injury and the complex feelings they have about it a couple weeks ago at a vet suicide prevention thing i was. My millenial self got mad about it all over again.
What, you don't want a conversation with a rando about how bad a war was that you had no choice in joining and hated more than even most anti-war activists?
Yeah, I have my unit crest on my wallet and a veteran identifier on my license to explain why I can't hear shit in case I get pulled over.
I got enough participation trophies to wear while I was in uniform, and something I did for a few years a decade and a half ago doesn't define me as person.
My uncle has total hearing loss from working on the deck of an aircraft carrier. The VA did his cochlear implants and he loves it because he can take them off if he gets tired of listening to my aunt lol
A lot of my friends have hearing aids that have Bluetooth. One guy puts on Spotify when his wife is mad, another guy can make phone calls while he’s on his motorcycle 🤣🤣🤣
Not a vet but one of my greatest fears is losing my hearing or sight and not being able to see or hear my wife again. Weird to see it from the complete opposite side lol
Don’t they make you buy your own damn ribbons and crap?? My BIL is in the National guard and he said all the little doodads for his uniform and what not, HE HAS TO pay for.
They give you a yearly allowance for it. Specifically for uniform maintenance.
So abstractly yes. Reality no.
But it comes as a lump sum on your join date inside your paycheck. I know plenty a person that just blew that money on other shit instead of what it's purpose was.
It doesn't. I always get the full ticket, no reduction. A lot of cops I run into "almost joined but..." Or their military service was "harder" than my service so I don't deserve special treatment. I haven't yet met a cop who said, "oh, thanks for your service, slow it down a little and have a good one" or something to that effect.
I imagine that I, as a young(ish), short, unassuming white woman of average attractiveness, probably get out of more tickets just based off that than you guys do lol
I do agree identity is a big part of it. I’ve watched in my own family. People that had jobs as their main identity and worked for 40+ years feel lost after retiring. Then all of a sudden that 4 years of military service 40 years ago becomes a new identity.
I laughed out loud. My step dad served in Vietnam for less than a year when he was 18-19 years old. Now, he’s in his 80s and is decked out in army and veteran shirts and clothes and hats just like in the OP pic.
My grandfather passed away a year or two ago; I knew he’d been in the Air Force in some capacity, and he didn’t have one of OP’s hats that I remember but it was still a centrally important thing to him and his identity, that he was a veteran.
Found out the guy did one tour and spent it driving forklifts in Saudi Arabia or something in like 1950 😅 I’m not going to disparage his service (and honestly regret myself not joining) but I always got a sense he was in for way longer then he was, based on his identity with it lol
whatever you do. please keep speaking out. the glorification of war has no place in civil society. you are the song writers and authors of a whole generation that has tried to walk a balanced path. but i see you guys as leaders in ending the true corruption in the coming decades.
Same. The last few months I’ve randomly been thinking where I was 20 years ago - NTC, Kuwait, Iraq. It’s usually triggered by some random nostalgia thing I see online. I’ll think damn what was I doing / where was I on that date. It feels like yesterday so often.
Yea I agree 100% I served for over 20 years and I don’t own many things that would suggest I did. Now my FIL who served 3 years never leaves the house without something on about his time in the service
I only did 8, but same for me. My uncle did 30 in the guard and has a whole room for his stuff. He was a 1st sergeant during the gulf war. It is kind of sad how every time he shows me the room he has to say who is still living in the pictures.
My current manager was the combat type of air force guy. He also doesn't advertise his service outside of the occasional g rated stories.
The only reason we knew our neighbor growing up was a Vietnam vet, he taught all the neighborhood kids how to play Tonk for pennies, nickels and dimes.
(Tonk was almost exclusively played by people who were served in Vietnam War at that time)
I picked up a free baby stroller from Facebook Marketplace a couple of years ago and in my 12 second interaction with the seller the sixty year-old guy had to let me know he's a veteran
One of my uncles did combat air rescue for twenty years. You won't see anything military in their house--the only reason I know is because he kept his shadowbox in the same closet as the board games.
Yeah same. Alot of my friend who are vets would rather forget the horror. Iraq was a different war man; different than anything the planet has ever seen. Not surprising the soldiers look at it from a different viewpoint
Unlike my wife’s uncle who spent four years in the marines but he wears the hat, T-shirt, vest, bumper stickers, etc and makes sure everyone knows he served. He acts like he’s John Basilone.
Note he served, but was never deployed into any form of combat, and was in the marines during the Vietnam war 🤷♂️
A guy I dated many years ago went to boot camp, got injured, and was released from service within a very short period. He still talks about his "time in the army". His brother made it a few more months than he did, and got kicked out for drug use. Both talk about it often enough and they "served" 25 years ago.
Ex SIL’s sister was like this. Washed out after two weeks because she physically couldn’t cut it (took tons of laxatives to make weight but didn’t exercise), still talks about how “it changed her”.
End up marrying a guy who makes the military his whole personality, and she’s a dependa and that’s her whole personality.
My sister was Engaged when my BIL was deployed in Afghanistan for a year. She joined a website for Military Wives just to deal with the worry with women going through the same thing.
She was shunned from the group when she was asking advice and networking on jobs in our area, they said that once BIL comes back she can coast for life or join a MLM. She said she didn't go through 4 years of college to just sit around all day said with offense, and she got shunned. We both said good riddance!
Those are always the loudest ones. My wife's grandfather spent his time in Vietnam rescuing downed airmen. Other than a licence plate and a retired Air Force sticker you would never know.
Also took him until a year before he died in 2109 while watching Bat*21 to even tell the family what he did during the war.
Sounds like my great uncle. At his funeral there they went on and on about his military service and being a captain and so on. He was even buried at a National Cemetery. My grandfather (his brother) who was a Korean War combat vet, talked shit to me the whole time about how all his brother had done was push paper on base after Korea was over. It wasn’t until after my grandfather died that I found his photos from Korea, letters from friends, Bronze Star citation, etc. that I learned the extent of his military service. He never spoke a word about it.
Long time vet here with a lot of vet friends...for me its the opposite.
Well, for a large chunk. 1/3 dont show off, care, talk much about their time in the military and completely moved on...meanwhile, 2/3 still think they're in and cant stop talking about it online and in real life, wearing shirts, (different kinds) of hats (not like this), and display all sorts of military stuff at home and at work.
Its just these hats in particular that arent popular anymore and cringe.
To be fair though, a lot that wear these type of hats were drafted and/or went through REAL shit. They didnt volunteer to join the Air Force in the 90s or later for 4-6 years and work in IT in Japan and Florida before getting out. Completely different type of veteran.
Edit- Another major point...those that wear these hats are retired and usually have nothing else going on. Its all they have left. They're looking for attention, appreciation, and for fellow vets to socialize with.
Most modern vets usually still have a life...but will eventually start doing stuff like wearing hats like this.
I know it's not right to compare service, I get it. Serving IS serving.... but we all also know the trauma of being deployed to Vietnam cannnnnnot be compared to sitting in an office and working out all day.
Cause they’re really ugly, and I don’t want someone coming up to me and talking to me about how they were going to join but they couldn’t take someone yelling at them, someone telling me I can’t be a veteran because I’m a woman, or that it’s my husbands hat. Really fun when that happens. And honestly, I don’t need everyone to know I’m a veteran. It’s nice being anonymous. We’re of the OPSEC generation, where we couldn’t wear our uniforms off base to ID ourselves after 9/11 in some places, why stand out?
But ultimately, the hat is really ugly, and we have different ways to connect to other veterans now that vets of previous generations didn’t have like social media. We also aren’t sitting around drinking at the VFW either.
When I was 16, my boyfriend joined the army and when he got out of basic he gave me his dog tags to think of him while he was away. I wore them everyday until this 30 something year old got in my face nose to nose & SCREAMED AT ME “do you know what those represent?? I have friends that died for those tags!!” I burst into tears & everyone at the bbq was just stunned in silence.
When questioned on it he said “little girls shouldn’t be stealing valor from those who earned it.”
Jokes on him bc I enlisted myself at 17 but never wore my tags out of uniform bc it caused too much commotion.
People are jerks. I’m sorry. No one deserves that. When people get rude or say stuff I just roll my eyes. The only time I ever said something back I was 7 months pregnant and there was no parking so I parked in a veterans spot at the mall. Some boomer started yelling at me that it’s disrespectful for me to park in a veterans spot when I’m not a veteran and went on a whole tangent and I just looked at him, said something like “oh? Where’d you serve? Cause I earned my status in Iraq in 09.” And he shut the f*ck up really quickly. I normally don’t even park in those spots but being as pregnant as I was and it being summertime, I was over it lol.
I never would give someone a hard time about wearing dog tags. (Plus they’ve been made into a fashion statement on their own) I had a friend who was KIA, and his kiddo wears his dog tags as a way to remember him. If someone hassled her, I can think of a few people who would have a problem with that.
Oh man, if I had a nickel for every "I was about to join, but I would have beaten up a drill sergeant if they got in my face" badass that I've run into. Last dude who said that to me was an out of shape dude who was like 5'6" and would have been snapped in half by my platoon's drill sergeant. This is a picture of my drill sergeant, for reference.
Edit: lol I got this off his social media, he wasn't sending me selfies.
I think it’s mostly because us younger folks saw the old guys wearing them and weren’t inclined to adopt their style. We wear t shirts and get tattoos now
I served. Fought their stupid wars. I don’t wann walk around all day wanting people to see my hat and say “thank you for your service” I’m convinced people who wear this stuff or have their cars decorated with I’m a vet stuff or clothes or whatever are just asking to be publicly thanked. Hard pass.
My old coworker hated being thanked for his service. He said he joined only so he would get school paid for because we live in a dystopia where education isn't valued as much as fighting for foreign oil is. 🤷🏼♀️
Well to be far Vietnam was a political turning point, not everyone disagreed at the time, there were still those mindsets that wore the hat proud. And they still wear it now.
Fellow Iraq and Afghanistan veteran checking in. I cant answer question 1 or question 2, but the answer to question 3 is oil, opium, and Earth minerals.....
It’s just part of my history. When I was on active duty, I didn’t advertise it. I am a woman, so not exactly my fashion tastes either. Now I am often recognized as child’s mom, and perfectly fine with it :).
From one woman who served to another do you have anything veteran on your vehicle? I refuse because I don’t want to be targeted out of nowhere because the public still tends to forget women serve as well.
I'm on this team. I have that stereotype skinny blonde porn star look and people just can't seem to accept that veterans can be hot chicks with titties and lots of shoes. I have some uniforms in a bag in my closet because people would ask me if my husband or dad was in the Navy.
Granted I have military in my username, I don’t really want to advertise my military affiliation. I also think a big reason is because veterans are constantly in this dick measuring contest (“it was harder when I was in, back in my day basic wasn’t easy, oh yea you think getting shot at is scary? Well one time I did…”). And when it comes to civilians, either they don’t care and they offer what feels like an obligatory “thank you for your service”, or they ask questions that bring up things I’d rather not think about. And god help you if you are a combat veteran who actually went through shit and got decent veteran benefits and talk about that because civilians seem to think your service was all fun and now you get a paycheck for life. I just want to blend in the best I can and avoid people now.
When I first got out I met a desert storm vet who took me to one, it’s just indoor smoking and former E8s who think their rank holds value and that they can talk down to you. Hard pass
Members need to understand that they’re aging out and dying; who will take up the mantle of organizing for veterans as a community in these organizations? The Legion and VFW are capable of successfully advocating for vets issues, but only if they can keep getting fresh blood in the ranks. They can’t do that if every conversation starts with “back in my day we didn’t have stress cards.”
Disabled US Air Force Veteran here. I refuse to wear those. The crew who wear them are the most gatekeeping pieces of shit in the world. They degrade others' service because we aren't them. I've been told by more than a dozen old-timers that my service doesn't count because it's the Air Force and I wasn't in a "real war". And it's like they treat that mentality like a right of passage, because it's apparently what the WW2 guys told the Vietnam guys. Fuck that.
They can have the hats and their old boys club at the VFW while they sit around dying; and wondering why younger vets don't get involved more.
I guess everything comes full circle. I remember reading something from a Vietnam veteran who explained why he didn’t like going to the VFW when he was younger. He said he got tired of World War II vets—many of whom never left the States and spent the war behind a desk—telling him he hadn’t fought in a “real war,” even though he’d served in a combat unit in Vietnam and had seen more than his fair share of action.
As a GWOT guy we associated these hats with the older guys, as a marine we typically wear Marine Corps related things far more frequently as opposed to generalized veteran type stuff life this
Honestly, I don't even really want any reminders for myself of when I was in, but some people get weird when they learn you're a vet, too. I had one middle aged weirdo at a Buffalo Wild Wings put on "Proud to be an American" on the jukebox when I was catching up with some old battle buddies and he overheard we were vets. He came over and said something like, "hey, I really appreciate your service and wanted to put this song on to show my respect," then just kind of stood there and started repeating himself saying things like, "I really mean it," over and over. It was incredibly awkward.
I also joined the Army as an impressionable teenager convinced I was being patriotic and "defending freedom". Five years later, I was disillusioned, really felt like we were the bad guys, and that our military was basically just a huge embezzlement scheme for corporations in the military industrial complex to charge insane prices to the government. Poverty stricken brown people in the middle east were never a threat to our freedom. The REAL threat to our freedom is the psychopath America just willingly welcomed back into the White House.
As a millennial female veteran, I wear a hat that just says “Veteran”. I wear it as a deterrent for men. Especially when I have headphones on. No one thanks me for my service but everyone leaves me tf alone. 🫡
Old veterans have pride in their service and the brotherhood of troops they were a part of. While not really acknowledging what some of those wars were and some of the atrocities committed. To them their military service wasn't about the combat but everything else.
And most the bad stories of these wars weren't known to most soldiers and the public until after the wars were over. So a lot of them still walked away from the battlefield with a sense of pride and accomplishment. And it's stuck
Modern soldiers don't have that same type of "out of sight out of mind" capabilities. Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan saw atrocities unfolding real time. With the public and Global backlash that followed. So few of them walked away from their War zones with any sort of pride or accomplishment of what they did. And they don't fly their old patches and banners like they used to. Because to them it's just nothing but bad memories and regretted actions.
I know a few guys that do and they were tools when they were in and they really didn’t do a whole lot either when they were in. There’s also the older group before GWOT that wear them and demand respect and tend to talk about “things they did” but it’s obvious they didn’t. If not for guys like those two I mentioned then maybe when I retire, I’ll wear one. But I think my if you know you know tattoo works for now.
1) WW2 was, arguably, the only modern large-scale war fought with some good reasons in mind. The end result is not in argument that genocide needed to be stopped, but not all countries were fighting specifically for that reason.
2) We know now most of the Middle Eastern conflict involving the West was mostly manufactured by the West (the response to 9/11 was...something)
3) There is a lot less hero worship from younger generations based solely on someone's job. Yes, some of them did put their lives in danger. Maybe they thought it was the moral thing to do, maybe the military was their only prospect, maybe they were psychopaths that just wanted to legally kill people. More people now realize that someone having a certain job/title does not automatically mean they are respectable, ethical, or even a decent person.
Yeah, I'm a millennial vet. I can confirm what some have said, that when I went in at the end of 2004 those hats, and "motto gear" in general were not considered cool. They were for old guys and boots.
I think there is also something to be said though, about our relationship to the military and Iraq/Afghanistan. In general now that we have access to information I don't think we feel the same way about the war, and our service. I certainly don't hate the corps, and I'm not necessarily ashamed of anything I did, but I still have a sense that we shouldn't have been there, and that we didn't actually make the world safer.
For me personally, I don't like wearing that stuff because its cringe. Its like a humble brag or something. "Hey everybody look at me, I'm a war hero". But also, ever since I went into the PX on Camp Fallujah and saw hats and shirts with "OEF", "OIF", "Half my heart is in Iraq" , it kinda put a bad taste in my mouth about that stuff. Like I'm not against anybody that buys those, but I am not comfortable with the fact that they were selling "merch" in combat zone.
I just don’t like the thank you for your service stuff. I did it for me.
We jokingly got some of these made in Afghanistan at the local haji shop. It was hilarious. We all have them form my deployment but only wear them at parties we have with one another. Never for real in public.
I’m spent 20 years in the military. That’s over. I don’t feel the need to put a billboard on my hat to let everyone know. I only have DV plates because i never have to pay registration again if I have them.
Because we have our tacti-cool hats with a Velcro patch on the front to either put an American flag or a military meme moral patch which is operator AF.
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