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OIF/OEF Reenacted?


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pwmiraldi67
Out of curiosity, I was wondering if anyone out there thinks that the current wars will some day be reenacted, or will they be too unconventional to draw an interest? Are there any Gulf War reenacting groups out there?

 

I see hundreds of young kids doing Airsoft OIF/OAF currently as of today, go online and you'll see all these kids running around pretending to be in Iraq or the Stan. the sad thing is alot claim to be "vets" so I say No its too soon to be doing the current operations, but thats just my 2 cents :)

 

p

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shrapneldude
Yeah, Paul is right.

Just go to www.militaryphotos.net/forums and visit the airsoft section...

 

Holy christ!

Some people out there REALLY, REALLY take their dress-up game a bit too far.

 

I'll bet some of those kits costs more than my car. Unreal.

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I see hundreds of young kids doing Airsoft OIF/OAF currently as of today, go online and you'll see all these kids running around pretending to be in Iraq or the Stan. the sad thing is alot claim to be "vets" so I say No its too soon to be doing the current operations, but thats just my 2 cents :)
Too true. Just troll through these sites and you’ll find exactly that:

http://www.airsoftforum.com/board/Airsoft-....html&st=40

http://williams.rajce.idnes.cz/Afghanistan_09/

http://www.scifihero.net/forums/index.php?..._post&f=261

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  • 2 weeks later...

A couple of thoughts from my end.

 

First, someone made the point that it would be impossible to recreate the landscape, buildings, sights, smells, and sounds of Iraq or Afghanistan. Personally, I don't think anyone has done a great job recreating all that for any of the other time periods, either. I'm pretty sure I have never seen Vietnam reenactors burning shinola at an event, and, to my knowledge, no squad of World War II reenactors has ever entered a German town that has been bombed, with the smell of burning buildings and rotten corpses lingering in the air. I'm pretty sure that a thoroughly accurate portrayal of any time period in this sense is not possible.

 

Keeping that limitation in mind, reenactments are limited to where they're held and in what context they are held. There are a lot more "living history" events where people set up camp or even just lay out items and stand around in uniform than there are actual battle reenactments. IMHO those events fill an important function because they allow people to come up and touch the gear, ask questions about the time period, etc. I'm not sure why someone would be "offended" by people portraying Desert Storm or OIF/OEF at an event like that, showing all the gear and what not, since it's an educational setting and these people are doing it for free, in their spare time, because that is their interest and hobby.

 

Now, I know a lot of reenactors, and out of the people I know, about half are currently in the service and a quarter are former military, and the rest are often family members of someone who has served. I'm not sure I know more than a few hands full of people who have no service and have no connection to the service at all, at least not in the hobby. I know Vietnam vets who reenact World War II, and Cold War vets who reenact Vietnam. I know current soldiers who do anything from Roman right on up to Desert Storm. To quote my husband at a display a few years back, when someone came up to "stitch nazi" his uniform, "What part of THIS is the uniform I WORE did you not understand?"

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if you've seen Generation Kill, I think the landscape was recreated there rather well. granted, their budget was high

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I was under the impression we were talking about recreating things for reenactments, not movies? Movies, obviously, have at their disposal much higher budgets and a fair amount of studio / green screen / special effects options not available to reenactors at actual events.

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  • 4 months later...
private panda

I'm a senior in high school, enlisting in the marines next august for EOD in Afghanistan. I reenact WW2, partially to because it's fun, partially to educate die kleines kinder that the war was not won by the 101st. (no offense to our jumping friends). I've three friends killed In Iraq/Afghanistan, and am confused by this airsofters. I mean, when I play paintball I use my ALICE gear simply because it's much more convenient then all the expensive made for PB stuff. Kids at school buy MOLLE gear and play airsoft in it, recreating scenes from Gen. Kill, and Call of duty, and it makes me want to kick their cumulative rears and show them my friend's pre-KIA photos.

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I'm a senior in high school, enlisting in the marines next august for EOD in Afghanistan. I reenact WW2, partially to because it's fun, partially to educate die kleines kinder that the war was not won by the 101st. (no offense to our jumping friends). I've three friends killed In Iraq/Afghanistan, and am confused by this airsofters. I mean, when I play paintball I use my ALICE gear simply because it's much more convenient then all the expensive made for PB stuff. Kids at school buy MOLLE gear and play airsoft in it, recreating scenes from Gen. Kill, and Call of duty, and it makes me want to kick their cumulative rears and show them my friend's pre-KIA photos.

check your inbox. You cannot enlist into EOD first term, nor can they guarantee you any theather of operations

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