The Pentagon in February confirmed that President Trump had requested a military parade after being inspired by the Bastille Day parade he saw when he visited France last year. And now, it’s been reported the Defense Department released a memo saying the parade would be held Nov. 11, the 100th anniversary of the end of the World War I.
According to a summary of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) released Friday, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) “agrees with President Trump that it is appropriate to honor and celebrate 100 years of patriotic sacrifice in a way that expresses appreciation and admiration for our men and women in uniform, including a parade in the nation’s capital and a national celebration for that purpose.”
Yes, the U.S. does have military parades, hometown events with a marching band or two, honoring hometown heroes and bringing the community together on the Fourth of July or Veteran’s Day. But a military spectacle marching down Pennsylvania Avenue?
We are still at war around the world
The last time a military parade was held in Washington D.C. George H.W. Bush was president. It was 1991 and the U.S. had just beaten back Saddam Hussein’s army. Around 200,000 people showed up and the parade cost the government $8.0 million. It can be argued that it was a different world then. Many people would say we were used to winning wars, even though we didn’t do well during the Korean War or the Vietnam conflict.
Today, we are still in Afghanistan after 16 long years, and we still have troops in Syria and Iraq and other “hot spots” around the world. We are also being challenged by China and North Korea, and to add fuel to the fire, the Trump administration on Friday re-established the U.S. Second Fleet to “counter the rising threat of Russia.”
The thing is, Trump’s ego is in the way of his reasoning for wanting his military parade. He wants to show Russia and China just how big our armed forces are and what a big threat we can be. But the world already knows that, because the U.S. spends more on defense than the next seven countries combined.
We are not a country governed by generals
Trump, who has never served in the military, likes to refer to “my generals,” and has surrounded his inner circle with generals, all of them espousing his own militaristic ideals. Trump’s decidedly militaristic shift while in office may prove to be a huge problem for the country.
We are not North Korea, Russia or China. We don’t throw huge parades to show off our military might, new missiles or fighter planes. Julian E. Zelizer, a professor of history at Princeton University, points out the difference in militaristic countries and the United States.
Zelizer notes that many people are critical of Trump’s proposed parade not because they don’t support the military, but because, in contrast to other countries, the U.S. has always wanted to “imagine ourselves celebrating values that go beyond the military.”
This country was built on ideas, like liberty, justice, equality – and not on our military strength. Zelizer says, “We were always defining ourselves by our ideals. It may not have have been true, but that’s how we did it: freedom, liberty, and even the market rather than through power. They had arms to win over countries. And we had ideals. If that is shed, [then] for some people we come closer to military power being the basis of our strength.”
Many critics contend a grand military display is more about gratifying the ego of the commander in chief, according to the Washington Post. “Image is Trump’s moral code,” wrote political commentator Jonathan Chait. “… He conscripts the military as a prop to bathe himself in an aura of presidential grandeur.”
It seems very obvious that despite the prohibitive cost of a military spectacle, which has been brought up by Trump’s generals, our little Napoleon of a president really wants to be a general and ruler of a mighty militaristic regime, and it is sad that we are actually allowing this to happen.
