Washington Post: "'Tanks, but no tanks' DC officials pan Trump's proposed grand military parade"
The Pentagon and White House are planning a miltary parade requested by President Trump, breaking with US tradition..."I don't think anyone believes this would be about trying to honor men and women who serve our country. This would only be about feeding one man's ego," said Council member
Charles Allen (D-Ward 6). "We repave Pennsylvania Avenue every four years just for the inaugural parade. Now imagine tanks and all the [treads] that go with them and all the heavy equipment. It will do a lot of damage to our local streets, and I don't know if the federal government is ready to write a check to do that."
Trump had long mused about an American military parade similar to the Bastille Day celebration in France he witnessed that featured uniformed troops, armored vehicles, tanks and fighter jets flying overhead. It apparently turned into a presidential directive when Trump met with top Pentagon generals in January, officials told the
Washington Post.
…Although she chairs the transportation committee [Council member
Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3)] said any worries about impacts to city roads paled in comparison to the message sent by such a parade.
"I don't want to be in Russia or North Korea, I don't want to be a totalitarian state and this is straight from their playbook.". . . . . . . . . . .
TIME:
"President Trump's Military Parade Is Likely to be a Logistical Nightmare for Planners" ...Getting a wide-array of military equipment from across the nation — in some cases, the world — into Washington, along with the technicians, mechanics, and support staff, will not be easy. It may also prove difficult to choose which units to showcase, what uniforms they should wear, what equipment they should carry, and when they’re available.
The last time the U.S. had a large-scale military parade was 1991 when the U.S. military overran Saddam Hussein’s forces in Iraq after just 43 days of combat. Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of Desert Storm,
led the pageantry and later joined President George H.W. Bush behind a bulletproof glass partition to watch battle-clad troops march past. The event featured Patriot missiles, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, M1-A1 Abrams tanks, and a flyover by four F-117 stealth fighters.
Streetlights had to be removed. The 67-ton tanks punched deep tread marks into the pavement. An army of 1,000 workers picked up heaps of trash left behind by
the crowd of 200,000 (later estimates
said crowds swelled to 800,000.)
The parade
cost $12 million, which amounts to about $22 million adjusted for inflation in 2018....
The idea for the parade came after Trump attended a
national event in Paris for Bastille Day, a July 14 holiday marking the storming of the Bastille prison in 1789. The event is widely considered the beginning of the French Revolution, so the French carry out an annual military parade that features marching troops and high-tech weaponry.
“To a large extent because of what I witnessed, we may do something like that on July 4th in Washington, down Pennsylvania Avenue,” Trump
told French President
Emmanuel Macron in September before a bilateral meeting as part of a series of United Nations events.
“I don’t know, we’re gonna have to try to top it,” he said. “But we had a lot of planes going over, we had a lot of military might. It was a really beautiful thing to see.”. . . . . . . . . . .
TIME:
"'Put Me Down as a No.' These Retired Generals Are Not Happy About President Trump's Military Parade"...A number of retired high-ranking military officials have spoken out about Trump’s orders for the Pentagon to begin planning a big parade, likely in Washington, D.C., since it was reported Tuesday evening by the Washington Post.
Among their objections:
Military parades have traditionally been the hallmarks of totalitarian regimes, appearing in the parade would be an unwelcome distraction for rank-and-file servicemembers and it would make it seem like the military is promoting the president and not serving the Constitution.Other military officials found troubling Trump’s desire for a parade, reportedly sparked after viewing a Bastille Day celebration in France, especially since it came just days after he declared — jokingly, his advisers argued — that Democratic lawmakers who did not clap for him at the State of the Union were
“treasonous.”“Donald Trump has continually shown himself to have authoritarian tendencies and this is just another worrisome example,” said
Retired Major General Paul Eaton, a Senior Adviser VoteVets, a progressive political organization devoted to electing veterans to office.
“For someone who just declared that it was ‘treasonous’ to not applaud him, and for someone who has, in the past, admired the tactics of everyone from Saddam Hussein
to Vladimir Putin,
it is clear that a military parade isn’t about saluting the military — it is about making a display of the military saluting him.”“I used to watch them in Bulgaria,” retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA and National Security Agency,
said on Twitter of these type of parades,
another reference to the association of these events with totalitarian regimes. “Put me down as a no,” he
added.