Vol. 01 No. 05
To all the new subscribers here, Welcome to Combat Threads. As they put it over at Perfectly Imperfect, “Don’t expect frequent posts, but when they come, you’ll know it’s worth a read.” I am going to try to keep to that, at least the second part. Before we get into it, I want to mention two things. First off, I am always looking to hear from you. What military fashion crossover questions do you have? What military-inspired fashion are you noticing? Drop me a line. Second, This coming Thursday, November 11, I will be presenting my research on the changing culture of military camouflage at the Sartorial Society Seminar on Zoom. I will be presenting with two other clothing scholars under “Gender, the Body and Performance.” So if you like what I do here and have time, pop in.
A few weeks ago, images of violent clashes in Beiruit’s Tayouneh neighborhood started splashing across my social media feeds. The October 14 violence left six killed and 32 wounded in some of the worst fighting Beiruit has seen since 2008. The kinds of images that came out of the clashes are familiar; men in civilian clothes wielding different Kalashokov variations, blood on the streets, broken glass, black smoke, etc. But a few things stood out.
When these images circulated, I noticed a handful skipped out of “Mil Twitter” and into more mainstream accounts. This was because of how the fighters in the photos were dressed. Nearly all the fighters pictured are wearing skinny jeans, T-shirts/polos, and brand-name sneakers like Nike or Adidas. The dress was arresting to American and European observers. By comparison, think of the images that came out in the weeks before the fall of Kabul of fighters from both sides in a mix of traditional Afghan dress and traditional military uniforms. The gunmen in these photos from Beirut are dressed in fashions you could see on any city street. The images from Beiruit reminded me of a Life Magazine photo from the 1965 Dominican Civil War showing a fighter in a Beatles T-shirt at the height of the band’s popularity. The presence of a Beatles shirt on the battlefield is as jarring as a pair of Balenciaga 2.0 Sock Sneakers. Paul Fussell, in his 2002 book Uniforms: Why We are What We Wear, writes, “the best uniform for the highly athletic work of killing would be jeans and sweatshirts (T-shirts in hot weather).”
The casual observer cannot pretend to not identify (either by military gear or non-western fashion) with those in the photographs. ‘I have those shoes too.’ Media (film, TV, video games, etc.) shapes our understanding of war. These images and the fighters do not look like video games or a movie version of war or the enemy “other” but like yourself. The juxtaposition of ordinary street clothes and the violence stops the viewer. The next day, the New York Times front-page photo was fighters in Air Jordan’s, trucker hats, and skinny jeans. This echoed New York Times front-page photo from 2009 of a US Army Soldier manning his position in pink boxer shorts and body armor.
A few Amal and Hezbollah fighters in the photos are wearing coyote brown chest rigs, sporting wraparound sunglasses, and baseball caps. All these are, taken together, are hallmarks of “operator style.” Over the past 20 years of the Global War on Terror, “operator style” has become a dominant trend, both inside and outside militaries. As Adrian Bonenberger and Adam Weinstein in The New Republic put it, “We worship the post-9/11 US military operator. We are a nation drunk on its own “tacticool” culture.”
Like all of us, the gunmen’s sense of appropriate military clothing has been shaped by their media consumption. What started as dress practice amongst American Special Operations Forces and the alike, often depicted in movies and videos games, is now (and has been) a global military trend that has ended up with even a Taliban fighter in a 5.11 Tactical hat.
Till next time,
CWM.
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