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Trump’s Military Parade Idea Sets Up Democrats for Another Fall
Trump was inspired by the Bastille Day parade he attended last summer in Paris.
President Trump and the Pentagon are quietly planning a grand military parade to roll through Washington DC later this year:
The inspiration for Trump’s push is last year’s Bastille Day celebration in Paris, which the president attended as a guest of French President Emmanuel Macron. Trump was awestruck by the tableau of uniformed French troops marching down Avenue des Champs-Elysees with military tanks, armored vehicles, gun trucks and carriers — complete with fighter jets flying over the Arc de Triomphe and painting the sky with streaks of blue, white and red smoke for the colors of the French flag.
Aboard Air Force One en route home from Paris last July, aides said Trump told them he was dazzled by the French display and said he wanted one at home.
It was still on his mind two months later when he met with Macron on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
“It was one of the greatest parades I’ve ever seen,” Trump told reporters. “It was two hours on the button, and it was military might, and I think a tremendous thing for France and for the spirit of France.”
Seated next to Macron, Trump added: “We’re going to have to try to top it.”
Military parades like this are uncommon in recent history, but certainly not unheard of. Presidents Truman and Kennedy featured military hardware in their inaugural parades. Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton had fighter jets scream through the sky for their inaugurations. The elder Bush also had a DC military parade to celebrate victory following the Gulf War.
The Washington Post broke this story about 90 minutes ago and, ever since, social media has exploded in outrage.
A man who dodged the draft 5 times, from an entire family of people who never served, making the military give him a parade. And we're paying for it. Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.
— Sarah Cooper (@sarahcpr) February 6, 2018
One step closer to the autocracy. All hail #KimJongTrump. https://t.co/SmbQSHRITq
— Leonard Pitts, Jr. (@LeonardPittsJr1) February 6, 2018
Spoiled rich boy demands he be able to play with his toys if he can’t even use a small nuke for fun. The good people of a once proud nation continue to watch and hope this doesn’t end in dictatorial rule. https://t.co/ctchQfOjyL
— Ian Livingston (@islivingston) February 6, 2018
Things that dictators do… https://t.co/W2bCn5eskS
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) February 6, 2018
Since this is Trump’s idea, I think we all know how it will go down. Nearly everyone from political and media castes will deride the parade, comparing Trump to Hitler. In an effort to impress their woke friends, several prominent voices will go too far by savagely denigrating the military itself. Then the American people will be polled and we’ll find out that they like the idea.
It’s the NFL protests all over again.
I’m a veteran who’s not thrilled about a big parade. Everyone on earth knows that America has the biggest, baddest military the world has ever seen — we don’t need to brag. And with a $20 trillion debt, I’d rather the money not be spent on chest-beating hoopla. But the average American doesn’t care about our shaky finances and adores our military.
A grand military display is poor economics, but I predict it will be smart politics heading into the midterms. Trump is once again Lucy from Peanuts setting up the football and the press is Charlie Brown, falling tail over tea kettle into another puddle of mud.
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Published in Military, Politics
I completely agree with this sentiment. A good Memorial Day or Veterans Day parade with floats, bands and everything is a great idea, but no grand military exhibition, please.
Yes, why? If you notice, the military tends to get rid of dress uniforms and the field uniforms tend to get promoted to a service uniform and then to dress uniform. I predict in a hundred years the dress uniform will have a camouflage pattern.
The Marines retained a dress uniform until the end of WWII that included those huge 19th century epaullettes. No one wore it during the war, and it was quietly retired when the war ended.
Then we got rid of the khaki uniform in the 70’s. In the 90’s we got rid of the dress whites. (I liked those.)
In parades of this nature, you usually wear the field uniform. Except that our field uniform is no longer worn in combat. It gets rather bewildering after a while. Someday that marpat uniform will be the dress uniform and we no longer wear it in battle.
Why do we have dress uniforms? For fancy occasions. For when you’re a military attache at an embassy and have to go to formal dinner parties. For the Marine Corps Ball.
About 99% of Marines never wear their dress blues except to the Marine Corps Ball. Or recruiting duty. And ever since Al Grey was the commandant, we’ve hardly ever worn the service uniform except to testify to Congress.
We could always cover the tank treads with old pussy hats and make everyone happy.
Yeah, that wouldn’t cause hysteria or anything.
Oh come on. You don’t think the troops would appreciate huge cheering crowds.
Should we cancel the flybys at every major sporting event? I mean, that costs money, takes time and makes the pilots poodles right?
I am very torn on this.
A big American military parade smacks of an insecurity complex. It is positively un-American.
On the other hand, publicly showing our pride in our military is a very good thing, indeed. Liberals treat the military like tools in a box, while bureaucrats are honored as philosopher kings who come down to provide “public service.”
I’d love to see a big public spectacle that honors our fighting forces – but a parade rubs me entirely the wrong way. Of course, I never go to parades of any kind; I have never understood the attraction. So perhaps my judgement is entirely flawed in this respect.
Oh, I don’t know. Let’s not be Francophobic. The French get something like 70% of their energy from nuclear. Zero carbon emissions. Obama made it a point to Europeanize the US in every way except for the ways that work.
Downtown Colorado Springs (military town only lacking Navy/Marines because we’re landlocked). Four corners occupied by old white people (why is it always old white hippies?). Signs read: Defund the military, Stop WWIII.
I was behind an old white woman at the pharmacy drive through the other day. She had the same message scribbled on the rear window of her car!
Lefties already hate the military. Haters gonna hate. We are a nation divided.
Obama did that at the academies — including the Air Force Academy!! The flyovers for the football games were private operations using restored aircraft. Ever notice how much time the flag was flown at half mast under Obama? Coincidence? I think not.
We shouldn’t let lefties and Trump haters smear American nationalism.
Well why not have something like an air show? But for all the branches of the armed services. People like air shows. Though I don’t really know how easily you could do the Navy one.
The Tidal Basin, of course.
Those fly bys are not political and are paid for with recruiting dollars.
Trump’s proposed parade is being billed (by his enemies, I admit) as a purely political stunt. I dont’ much like his political enemies, but having been made a political act, it is inappropriate for the military to be involved, unless it’s for a specific event, such as the Centennial of the end of WWI.
Are you saying his enemies have the right to decide what and what is not a political act by President Trump? By that logic if the North Koreans launch a nuclear-tipped missile at Honolulu, and Trump’s political enemies state if he retaliates it will be a political act Trump would not be allowed to involve the military in actions against North Korea.
But that argument will come after the argument that we can’t retaliate because we deserved it.
There are some persistent iconic images in the American mind–the GI kissing his girlfriend on the dock after World War II, the little girl running from the Agent Orange in Vietnam, and many others. The textbook pictures of Communist and Nazi military parades in front of their capitols are some of the strongest icons, and they create some of the worst mental associations for people. Every little kid is shown those pictures and says to himself or herself, “We’re not like that. That’s how I know they are the bad guys and we’re the good guys.” There’s nothing we can do to overwrite those images and their psychological associations.
Fine have a parade in Nov to celebrate the 100 th anniversary of the end of WW1.
Check and Mate.
I like that idea.
Ok let’s face it:
whoever is tired of Trump
is tired of life.
Wow. So much angst over a flipping military parade. The Republic used to have them in the good old days when we were closer to the constitutional norm. Now we are far from that so I guess they should be forbidden because only Nazis and Commies do them. And France.
Yall are funny.
How do you figure?
Soldiers hate parades. The division parade that I participated in three times was the absolute worst part of my year, and that included the near monthly experience of times working a full day, and then spending 6 hours preparing for a jump, 2 hours flying “nap of the earth” to jump out of a perfectly good airplane in the middle of the night, landing like a sack of [CoC], then carrying my chute plus all my gear all the way across the drop zone, getting home at 4 am and then having to be back at work by 10. I would choose that a hundred times over a parade.
Well, they’re not having as much fun as the rest of us, that’s for sure!
If you can get an aircraft carrier going fast enough you can just drive it up onto the beach. Couple of escalators and boom, instant air show.
A Navy air show is easy (the Blue Angels demonstrate all over the country). A Navy ship show might be a little more difficult.
Didn’t Nero create a lake to show off his ships?
The Coliseum was the venue for naval battle reenactments. Unless that’s a myth.
I’m pretty sure they dug up the sunken ships recently.
I think two things are being conflated:
The Lake Nemi boats were among the earliest examples of nautical archaeology, the first attempt to raise them being made in the fifteenth century. They were really floating palaces. They were finally fully excavated in the 20th century, but the vessels destroyed during World War II.
The first naumochia were held by Julius Caesar, with the arena created by digging a shallow basin on the Tiber. Claudius held the biggest one on Lake Fucino – fifty ships on each side with enough space for them to ram each other. They were later held in amphitheaters (including the Coliseum) but these were much smaller spectacles.
The origin of our modern demolition derby.
This is one on which I have to agree with you.