Not everyone loves a parade the way President Donald Trump does. He wants a huge, expensive military parade down Pennsylvania Avenue, but Republican members of Congress are throwing cold water on the idea, and Democrats are openly mocking it.
The Washington Post reported this week the president suggested the idea during a Jan. 18 meeting to Defense Secretary James Mattis and Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Pentagon’s takeaway from the meeting was that the parade was an order, not a request.
“The marching orders were: I want a parade like the one in France,” a military official told the Post. “This is being worked at the highest levels of the military.”
It’s tough to rank all of Trump’s bizarre initiatives, but a muscle-flexing military parade is close to the top. Trump is said to have been awestruck at a July 14 Bastille Day parade he witnessed in Paris. He was still agog at the United Nations in September.
“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.”
It must have been some parade to change Trump’s views of France so dramatically. During the 2016 campaign, he derided France’s immigration policies and quoted a mysterious friend named “Jim” as saying “Paris is no longer Paris.”
Trump’s views on the military also have changed significantly. He never served during the Vietnam War, having received four student deferments and one medical deferment for bone spurs. In 1997, he said his sexual escapades in the 1980s were “my personal Vietnam.”
He used the military as a foil during the campaign, referring to it as a “disaster” and a “shambles.” As president, however, he frequently mentions “our great military.”
Every president honors the military, but Trump is the first one to order up a full-bore Red Square-on-May-Day extravaganza featuring tanks, missiles, howitzers and thousands of marching troops. President George H.W. Bush staged a smaller “Victory Celebration” in June 1991 to mark the end of the first Gulf War. The second Iraq war hasn’t ended so well. Thousands of troops remain there and in Afghanistan. This is not exactly time to unfurl the “mission accomplished” banners.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, tactfully told CNN that a parade is “not necessary.”
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., stated, “I think confidence is silent and insecurity is loud. America is the most powerful country in all of human history; you don’t need to show it off.”
But showing off is what this president is all about. He would use the pretext of honoring the military to honor himself. Great nations don’t behave this way.