{"id":33104,"date":"2019-05-12T08:56:41","date_gmt":"2019-05-12T16:56:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=33104"},"modified":"2019-05-12T08:56:41","modified_gmt":"2019-05-12T16:56:41","slug":"the-u-s-armys-new-retro-maga-uniform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/12\/the-u-s-armys-new-retro-maga-uniform\/","title":{"rendered":"The U.S. Army’s New, Retro, MAGA Uniform"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Army\u2019s new uniforms are a throwback to World War II. Making the Army Great Again?<\/i><\/p><\/div>\n

News that the Army is moving to a new, retro<\/a>, uniform modeled on World War II-era designs got my military friends buzzing. Not so much about the \u201cnew\u201d (old) uniform, but all the badges, ribbons, tabs, and related baubles and doodads that adorn US military uniforms today, a topic I\u2019ve written about before at TomDispatch.com<\/a> and here<\/a> at BV.<\/p>\n

First, the new uniform. World War II was the last \u201cgreat\u201d war America truly won, so it\u2019s hardly surprising the Army is reaching back to the era of the \u201cgreatest generation\u201d and the \u201cband of brothers.\u201d Why not tap nostalgia for that “good” war, when Americans banded together against the Nazis and the Japanese? It\u2019s also consistent with Trump\u2019s message about \u201cMaking America Great Again\u201d; we can even substitute “the Army” for “America” and keep MAGA.<\/p>\n

For Trump, this mythical \u201cgreat\u201d America seems to center on the 1950s, whereas for the Army it\u2019s WWII and the 1940s. Still, these MAGA uniforms and hats seem to say the Army and America are currently not great, and that the path to greatness is a retrograde one, a return to the past. (That return apparently does not include a revival of the draft and America\u2019s citizen-soldier tradition.)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But it was an image of Dwight D. Eisenhower that got my military friends buzzing. Ike led the invasion of D-Day and was the architect of victory in Europe as supreme allied commander, yet you\u2019d never know it from his simple, almost unadorned, uniform. Consider the image below of Ike that accompanied the story in the New York Times<\/em>:<\/p>\n

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A victorious Ike returns a salute<\/i><\/p><\/div>\n

As one of my military correspondents, a retired command sergeant major who fought in the infantry in Vietnam, wrote to me:<\/p>\n

[Ike was] A man from a cow town in Kansas, Abilene, who was a lower rung grad at West Point and came back from WW I as a Major. Twenty years later as a LTC enters WW II and comes back a Five Star General, one of only about five ever made and he has two, count them, two tiny rows of ribbons, no hero badges, not even a bolo badge to show what a great marksman he is, no para wings, no ranger tab, no CIB\/EIB and FIVE, COUNT THEM, FIVE STARS on his shoulders. He also ran for, won, and was a pretty damned good [Republican president] for eight years. The Generals we have had since, starting with Westy [William Westmoreland] were all losers although they all had badges, ribbons, medals, patches all over their sorry asses BUT no VK medals, no VVN medals, no Victory Medals from any damned place I can think of. Well, maybe Grenada or Panama, or a bar fight in Columbus, GA. Home of Ft Benning\u2026 Something to think about, eh?<\/em><\/p>\n

All those \u201cbells and whistles\u201d on military uniforms today \u201care like Vanity License Plates for one\u2019s car,\u201d this same command sergeant major noted. Speaking of vanity, a retired colonel told me there\u2019s a company \u201cthat\u2019ll miniaturize your \u2018rack\u2019 so you can wear your ribbons on your lapel–all of them–when you separate [from the military]. LOOK AT ME: I\u2019M A HERO!\u201d<\/p>\n

One thing is certain: We have a ribbon- and badge-chasing military. (General David Petraeus was the worst.) People literally want to wear their “achievements” on their sleeve – or blouse – or jacket, even after they leave the military. Military members chase these baubles. They “achieve.” But what about quieter achievements that you can’t wear? How about integrity, honesty, commitment, fairness? What about intelligence? Dedication to the craft of arms that doesn’t involve getting a fancy badge like jump wings from France?<\/p>\n

The Army\u2019s retro-chic uniforms won\u2019t be of any value if we keep valuing the wrong things. A Boy Scout military that keeps chasing merit badges for the sake of promotion of self is a very bad thing, irrespective of uniform design.<\/p>\n

Yet there\u2019s another side to all this. As my colonel-friend put it:<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the real cost of this ribbon chasing. There\u2019s an enormous number of man-hours expended on writing and chasing the paperwork to award these doodads\u2026 At a time when the military is allegedly overtaxed and burned out, why are they wasting so much effort on this nonsense? Why are some units hiring editors to keep the decorations moving? In survey after survey, AF pilots cited decorations and other administrative nonsense, not deployments, as the reason they don\u2019t want to stay in. But since generals groom and promote only those who think like them (having selected them when they were captains), nothing changes. \u201cYou have to take care of your people,\u201d they say, and if you listen to E-9s [the senior enlisted] people are happiest when they get doodads.<\/em><\/p>\n

As another close military friend put it: \u201cAnd don’t even get me started on the ridiculous number of ribbons and badges today. A captain today will have as many ribbons as a circa-1944 two-star [general]. [In their new retro uniforms,] they’ll just look like extras in a war movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

In sum, a jury of my peers has come back with a verdict on the Army\u2019s new retro uniform: Love the look, but can you please bring back as well the humble citizen-soldiers of Ike\u2019s era, the ones who won wars without all the gratuitous self-promotion?<\/p>\n

William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He taught history for fifteen years at military and civilian schools and blogs at Bracing Views<\/a>. He can be reached at wastore@pct.edu<\/a>. Reprinted from Bracing Views<\/a> with the author’s permission.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

News that the Army is moving to a new, retro, uniform modeled on World War II-era designs got my military friends buzzing. Not so much about the \u201cnew\u201d (old) uniform, but all the badges, ribbons, tabs, and related baubles and doodads that adorn US military uniforms today, a topic I\u2019ve written about before at TomDispatch.com […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-33104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33104"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33106,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33104\/revisions\/33106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33104"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=33104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}