Should we remove combat patches to be sensitive to those who don't have them?

If you earned an award put it on your uniform I proudly wore my combat patch and CIB proudly and everybody looks up to people that have been to combat because they know that those people were in the shit

You gotta be shi**ing me. Those Soldiers laid their lives on the line for those patches. Feelings hurt my ass. Go back home and play tiddlywinks!!! Good lord, stop already.

Should we give them physical scars too? Make them amputees? Come on, get real!

I was deployed for 365 days and the night we was to redeploy back we were extended for another 120 days so i earned the right to wear my patch...i was boot private and not once did ever feel left out cause i didn't have a combat patch at that time

Oh Hell no! You earned it, you should wear it proudly.
Yes, it was probably close to 'Hell on Earth'; but that is what makes such a thing so significant. If these children want one so badly, then they need to get their butts out there and into combat. Unless that would be too scary for them.
I, personally, never earned the right to wear a combat patch, I retired in 1998; I guess I was 'between wars'. And, I respect the hell out of the folks that served in combat. God bless them all.
One of my nephews did three tours in Afghanistan, in the Army. Another one, currently in the Navy, was recently in the Gulf area; and is now somewhere out in the western part of the Pacific. I don't ask, because he shouldn't tell.

Only in the Army do I read these inane questions. There is no wonder to me that the USA is studying the effectiveness of the Marine Corps, why and how it is accomplished. If attitudes like this question suggests are prevalent, they will never understand or come to an accurate conclusion.

FUCK. NO.

being prior active duty marine switched active army here is my opinion about this 1) deployment patches are just clutter on the uniform. I think velcro on the uniform looks cheap and tacky it shouldn't matter your deployment or unit the only 3 things that really should matter are your last name your branch of service and your rank maybe addition of specialty schools ( air assault, airborne, dive, ect.) and 2) if your going to have them allow prior service who have deployed to wear them

Sounds like this new generation of troops are asking for Participation trouphies? You only need to feel left out if you had something to do with it.

I'm prejudiced and probably have insufficient time "in service" to comment with any degree of validity. Having said that, with the caveat that my branch of the military did not subscribe to a lot of "extraneous" patches, etc., If something is EARNED, that "thing" is cheapened by either giving it to someone who did not earn it or by precluding one who DID EARN it from wearing it. Should those who have earned the C.I.B. or earned paratrooper wings (or the "Budweiser", for that matter) be precluded from wearing them? I suppose nobody wants to be a FNG. But that is just life. Yet I do have to question "feel good" or "I showed up" trinkets. You are either a member of a team or you aren't.