Peter’s Blog

Artifacts from the Future: Bumper Stickers of 2018

The above-the-fold front page article in today’s NRC was about SecDef Gates saying that many NATO armies weren’t good at counter-insurgency operations and it was accompanied by a very large version of this image:

(Aside: it’s a rather odd photo to use, considering both the subject matter and that the photo was taken in November)

What is the first thing I noticed? Canadian soldiers have major facial hair! Check out the ’staches on those dudes! And it’s just just them. Here’s one of their colleagues:

Is the Canadian Army taking the whole lumberjack stereotype a little too far? =)

Proof again that things are more liberal up north: among US troops in Afghanistan only Special Forces are allowed to have beards. But what beards!

I don’t know if this is a still the case, as it seems that the beard policy wasn’t popular higher up. From one account, Special Forces operators (that’s right, they’re beyond soldiers, they’re operators!) played all sorts of charades to protect their officially-sanctioned beards from the wrath of senior officers.

At least they don’t look as funny as these Dutch Special Forces troops, though I’m sure Jack would tell you a light orange beard is the height of style:

On a more serious note, the Reuters website is very good and has lots of incredible pictures from around the world. While looking for the first image, I found this striking photo: