When I was very young and living in Beirut one of my favorite times of year was Independence Day, when the Lebanese Army, such as it was, would parade down Damascus Road in all its pitiful glory. We lived on a fourth floor off that road so it was like watching the Cubs from just beyond Wrigley Field, back when the Cubs were perennial losers.
Then as now the Lebanese military was cobbled from surplus equipment donated by the French, British and American militaries. But to a little boy still a few billion brain cells short of the age of reason the display looked awesome, a Buzz Lightyear-like miracle of toy soldiers come to life. The president’s motorcade would appear at one point, his gleaming black Mercedes 600 sandwiched between troop transports and whatever artillery hand-me-downs the military could show off. That Independence Day fell on Nov. 22, the day after my birthday, when I’d still be drunk from inhaled sugar, explains how easily I could be taken in by soldiers made to parade like circus peacocks and mistaking delusion for pride.
For us the delusion was right around the corner, on that same Damascus Road, which for 15 years became the longest, deadliest trench of Lebanon’s civil war, our own apartment building turning into a different kind of luxury box for assassins more glamorously referred to, in societies that don’t know better, as snipers. Like military parades, every instrument of death has its PR office. Our prideful military was of course incapable of stopping the war. Not because Lebanon’s military was small or poorly equipped, though it was both. But because it was surrounded by militias and paramilitaries in an age when, since World War II, regular armed forces have been pretty much sidelined by the boils of insurgency.
The United States military hasn’t done much better. It’s not as if, the farce of Grenada aside, we’ve managed to win a single war since 1945. Even the first Gulf War, that most massive of military parades, was prelude to the debacle of Iraq. Aside from devastating countries like Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Iraq, and now Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and wherever else the war on whatever is dumping its lead, the best we’ve done is engage in perpetual war for perpetual peace, as George Orwell and Gore Vidal put it in their own way. Of course we should have a parade. But as Joyce Carol Oates wrote this week, “most of the parade should be veterans. Stretching on & on for blocks. & photographs of those who’d died in battle. Who could possibly object?”
Ah. Every writer’s dumbest question. Why, a man whose only knowledge of war is what he sees on TV. Or on a parade ground.
Our Dear Leader was in Paris for Bastille Day last July, when the French, who have yet to get over their defeat at Sedan in 1870, put on a therapeutic military parade as impressive as their Maginot Line. Dear Leader clapped like we used to on Damascus Road. After he got home he ordered the military to do what France does. I can understand the Californian impulse to replicate the finesse of a Bordeaux wine or the New York impulse to outstyle Yves Saint Laurent. But this is the first time in the history of the Republic that the American military would seek to emulate the designers of Dunkirk.
Dear Leader says he wants to show the military appreciation. But we are not a nation lacking in appreciation for its military. We are a nation drowning in appreciation of the military. The appreciation is blind, bombastic, extreme, even prurient. There’s something fetishistic in the way we salivate at uniforms as if anything military were not only a self-evident virtue but an object to be revered and lusted after: the sight of masses at sports events, palms on hearts, eyes raised to screeching fighter jets or gazing at fatigues and boots on the field is mass delirium only a few steps removed from the outstretched right arm of that gesture’s more sinister context.
Children have become as objectified as soldiers in that routine of the past few wars when a returning veteran and mom or dad “surprises” the child in her classroom, cameras and reporters whirring. Local government meetings wed prayers and appreciation for the military at meetings’ beginnings, thanking those deployed (and in the process making the officials look more virtuous than they are). And never once through it all does the question arise: two decades of war, deployments and body bags, for what? More prayers and more praise.
The accepted, unquestioned assumption is that soldiers are defending the homeland. You’d think we were in an existential struggle for our survival. If only. Maybe those based on U.S. soil are filling that role. But those fighting in the Middle East demonstrably are not. Through no fault of their own and every fault of the last several commanders in chief, they have been deployed in wars that have demolished American prestige, diminished American influence, plundered our financial soundness (not that deficits matter anymore), decimated families at home and abroad, and done nothing to stop the rise of extremism, whether it’s Iranian-backed Shiitism, which now controls Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and parts of Yemen or Saudi-backed and financed Sunni extremism, whether it’s ISIS or al-Qaeda, which may wane here and there but only to mutate and reconfigure itself elsewhere. There has been no victory to speak of, only losses, and more losses ahead. That’s not opinion. Endless deployments with no talk of victory, let alone talk of exits, proves it. As these wars linger, our power drains, our empire shrinks. Only our pride grows, strangely and absurdly divorced from reality. Every display of sexed up militarism is a surrender to decline.
How much of these orgies of appreciation are masking the futility, enabling the waste of lives, making virtue of gratuitous and pointless bloodletting? There is nothing more moving than honoring Gold Star mothers and fathers. There is nothing more galling than creating more Gold Star families by doing the same thing over and over, pretending that the outcome will one day be different but knowing, as we well knew in Vietnam, as we knew in Iraq, as we have always known in Afghanistan, that there is not going to be a difference, there will never be a victory, there will only be more killing, more futility, more Gold Star parents. Yet we continue to appreciate and reinforce the engine of futility. The routine ceremony of it all has become oil to cannon fodder and salve to our stupefied consciences. We don’t need parades. We need to bring soldiers home.
There was something inevitable in Trump’s desire for a military parade, one of his own, one to go along with his America-First delusions of grandeur even as our image continues to shrink in proportion to our growing ridicule. He’s the man to long for that lifted right arm. Military parades are for small minds and insignificant nations, for authoritarians and sycophants with an inferiority complex. They’re costly, embarrassing and juvenile. Putting aside the untimeliness of a military parade these days–as untimely as George W. Bush’s Mission Accomplished theater on the U.S.S. Lincoln in 2003–we’ve done well to avoid them all these years. The president would do better to remember that the Pentagon is not his toy store, and if it’s the military he wants to honor, he could start with those who return from deployments in pieces, those who never return, and the 20 veterans who’ll kill themselves the day of his parade, and every day this year. Applaud that, Monsieur Président.
Pierre Tristam is FlaglerLive’s editor. Reach him by email here or follow him @PierreTristam. A version of this piece aired on WNZF.
Fredrick says
Oh man this is going to be good. I sitting here with popcorn anxiously waiting to read the comments on this piece.. Thanks Pierre. I thought I was just going to have to find something on NetFlix.
I love how the “Dear Leader” as you wish to call him, snaps his fingers and all of you liberals jump off the deep end. He plays the liberal left like a fiddle.
I think an editorial how the Republicans did it again would have been more appropriate… they complain about Obama spending more than we take in but as soon as the shoe is on the other foot they do the same damn thing. Kinda like they did in having 7 years to do something to fix the Obamacare debacle and have nothing ready to replace it. Or like Obama having control of both houses to do something with Dreamers, and the best he can do is pronounce and “edict” and offer them temporary protection. They are all crooks, and liars….both sides of the aisle and the media is no better…..
Pierre Tristam says
Frederick, the piece you wanted to read was actually in the works but got bumped off by a couple of others along the way this week until this one won out, so I could get in touch with my giant inner goat ass, apparently. (I tell you, all that exercise and good dieting for nothing.) But a deficit piece is coming.
palmcoaster says
Kudos to the reality check of Flagler Live!
We need another Ike Eisenhower that warned us about to avoid massive military spending and making a routine of wars that will drive our economy to shreds.
“Eisenhower was a moderate conservative who continued New Deal agencies and expanded Social Security. He covertly opposed Joseph McCarthy and contributed to the end of McCarthyism by openly invoking executive privilege. Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and sent Army troops to enforce federal court orders that integrated schools in Little Rock, Arkansas. His largest program was the Interstate Highway System. He promoted the establishment of strong science education via the National Defense Education Act. Eisenhower’s two terms saw widespread economic prosperity except for a minor recession in 1958. In his farewell address to the nation, Eisenhower expressed his concerns about the dangers of massive military spending, particularly deficit spending and government contracts to private military manufacturers. He was voted Gallup’s most admired man twelve times and also achieved widespread popular esteem both in and out of office.[5] Historical evaluations of his presidency place him among the upper tier of U.S. presidents”.
Historians long ago abandoned the view that Eisenhower’s was a failed presidency. He did, after all, end the Korean War without getting into any others. He stabilized, and did not escalate, the Soviet-American rivalry. He strengthened European alliances while withdrawing support from European colonialism. He rescued the Republican Party from isolationism and McCarthyism. He maintained prosperity, balanced the budget, promoted technological innovation, facilitated (if reluctantly) the civil rights movement and warned, in the most memorable farewell address since Washington’s, of a “military–industrial complex” that could endanger the nation’s liberties. Not until Reagan would another president leave office with so strong a sense of having accomplished what he set out to do.
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Mark says
“The appreciation is blind, bombastic, extreme, even prurient.” WTF? Why are you in this country?
Gkimp says
The United States military hasn’t done much better. It’s not as if, the farce of Grenada aside, we’ve managed to win a single war since 1945.
Because of liberals whining!
Seriously says
Do us a favor and take your retarded view and stupid bullshit back to Beirut! You sir are a giant goat ass and every article you write stinks.
Pogo says
@Pierre Tristam
My fellow American, I’m very proud to agree with you 100% As usual – you’re in very good company:
Ex-SEAL who says he fired final bin Laden shot calls Trump’s military parade ‘third-world b——-‘
Full article
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/09/politics/navy-seal-bin-laden-shooter-trump-military-parade/index.html
anon says
Obama NEVER had both sides of Congress democrat, except for a small short period in 2008-2009 where the House was for a short time democratic and they fought hard to bring the U.S. back from the brink of the great recession caused by republicans, but by 2010 republicans once again ruled the financial roost (House) as they had since 1995. Historically, whenever we have had recessions/depressions, it has been while or as a result of republicans being in control in Congress. Ever since the 1950s!
anon says
Vote OUT ALL corrupt republicans who only bring us WAR, poverty and recessions/depressions every single time they are in control of Congress! Elites win out while the rest of us suffer. THEY don’t care as long as they ‘get their’s.’
Paul says
As a disabled vet, I thank you for your service, Pierre. If only our politicians had half of your courage to tell the truth. It is past time to end the madness.
Pete says
Pierre, I don’t always agree with everything you write, but you knocked it out right of the park with this article. I wondered if anyone else understood what I see as the unnecessary glorification of the military in (at least) the last two decades. And just for the record, I’m neither a left-leaning liberal nor a right-wing fascist. I’m actually a pragmatic centrist who is extremely concerned about this issue, especially now that Trump is in office. Although a strong military force is essential to protect our country and interests, the American foreign policy has been an unmitigated disaster, going back to the Vietnam War. This same ‘mentality’ loves to portray our injured veterans as “victims” of the enemies of America, but the fact is that because the draft has long been abolished, no one is forced to join the military – and you can’t call someone a victim if they volunteer to join. To add insult to injury, this same government that engages in useless & costly military wars around the world, treats our returning soldiers like crap when it comes to their mental, emotional and physical health after their return to society. So what’s Trump’s solution? A military parade! That’s MUCH better than spending the parade money (and many millions more) on veteran’s health care. This is deranged insanity in its worst example.
Born and Raised Here says
I don’t really consider the United States engaged in these current wars. We know as soon as we leave a coup will take place, and the country will fall. These are military exercise to keep our military sharp and ready. Kinda like football practice.
palmcoaster says
Do I perceive here after reading “Seriously says” racist attack on Flagler Live these Trumpsters as a bunch of bullies as he is and of course follows his pathetic American eroding POTUS image..? Who give these facists the right to question our Love for America and our right to be here? Mussolini fashions in USA now?
Marlee says
Excellent writing.
…”the Pentagon is not his toy store”!
Has anyone come up with a cost on his latest crazy idea?
Let’s see…US taxpayers are now paying for his wall and now his parade?
Richard says
I didn’t read the article, just the comments, as most likely it’s more of the same bullshit hatred of Trump. However, my opinion on having a military parade is a waste of time and taxpayers money to accomplish what, try to one up Rocket Man or China, Russia, etc? Our motto should be “speak softly but carry a BIG STICK”! The world and the citizens of America already know our POWER and abilities to destroy civilization. Don’t need to show off except where it counts, on the battlefield.
smarterthanmost says
Unfortunately our military presence is necessary in some parts of the world, other than here. Obama proved that by removing troops from Iraq, and ISIS was born.
@seriously, Pierre is entitled to his opinion, as you are. In this case, your opinion is wrong, as not every article he writes “stinks”. Pierre’s intent with article, is wrong also, in referring to President Trump as “Dear Leader”, which is obviously a reference to Hitler, “Mein Fuhrer”. However I do agree on one point, a parade is unnecessary and costly.
Pierre Tristam says
Actually the Dear Leader reference is intended to parallel the way Korea’s Kim Jong-un is referred to, these two men having so much in common. Comparisons to Hitler are off-base, though comparisons to mob hysteria trending to fascism are not.
Chris A Pickett says
Buckle up Snowflake, it is going to be a LONG UPSETTING 7 years for you. But you have your platform to whine so Enjoy!
Edith Campins says
As always, great article. Under trump we are rapidly devolving into a third world country, corruption at the highest levels, nepotism, political appointments of the unequaled and incompetent, and military parades.
How much is this going to cost the American taxpayer? Less than the wall but more than a golfing trip to Mar A Lago.
William Moya says
Our credibility complex has long been the guiding force of both our foreign and domestic policy due to our tenuous foundation of the state which instead of believing in America’s promise chose to use force using the police and military as its defenders wrap around the Flag, Constitution, and GOD.
Southern states in particular became paramount to curfewed occupation forces with white and blacks terrified of each other. In fact we don’t have to pore over history books, just remember Ferguson after a night of angry protests, the next morning the police came out with armored cars and machine guns, that was the state, unwisely, showing its hand.
When it comes to foreign policy, we just defeat our enemies, we turn the places where they live into ruble, think Dresden, Pyongyang, Hiroshima, oir what we are now doing in Iraq and Syria. By the way, has the pentagon release the number of civilian casualties in our latest excursions?
For too long our concept, and that of humanity in general, on leadership is the authoritarian model, the military converts its recruits into automata, the antithesis of existentialism.
GY says
Love parades, floats, bands, Armed Forces marching units..We have lots of wonderful Patriotic Holidays. Don’t need to spend more $ on another one with tanks and Presidential Ego hoop la. It’s OUR money.
Algonquin J. Calhoun says
What will he want next, a pony? Screw the parade give those millions to our wounded and homeless vets.
bob says
i know you hate trump pierre but obama was destroying our country
to no end, please tell me with this antichrist spirit brought sodomy
now in walgreens bathrooms males who identify as females allowed
now in walgreens bathrooms this is an abomination to GOD
LEV18-22 OBAMA HAS BROUGHT HAVOC TO OUR COUNTRY
AND THE FIRE IS IGNITING,he was a homosexual muslim
who wanted america to become a socilaist country, trump
may not be perfect but he really does love america.
wakeup people and vote the liberal establishment
antichrist people i washinghton out before our
freedom is gone. jesus saves john14-6
knightwatch says
Trump is just like Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao and the various Uns, Jongs, etc. He’s just not as smart as they were (or are in Un’s case). They knew how to organize a purge and to overthrow an established political order to create a dictatorship. Trump is heading in that direction, but he is way too ill-informed, too ignorant to pull it off. He wants to be a dictator, but he is too easily distracted by shiny objects. He wants a parade in his honor before he actually overthrows our democracy instead of engineering the overthrow, consolidating his power, eliminating his enemies and graciously but reluctantly accepting the crown, THEN throwing the biggest most beautiful military parade in human history.
Hopefully, he will never learn.
palmcoaster says
In “most cases” were there is a dictator ruling, he holds great military parades to intimidate anyone that opposes him” and the world as history shows! Typical insecurity complex and show of weakness of those rulers. We still reside in a Democratic Republic so the Pentagon. Congress and Senate better stop this nonsense and hear at least that 89% of Americans opposing the useless and costly military parade. Hey, mid term elections are closer than POTUS and his GOP associates believe. Lets get out and vote in droves and we better watch close those elections canvassing boards at work…
Shark says
We need a going away parade for drumpf !!!!!
Damien says
Nothing wrong with a little old fashioned American Patriotism Pierre… I say bring it back!
GWOT Veteran says
As someone who has had my friends maimed and killed hunting the evil people most liberals pretend doesn’t exist, I want to tell you that while we will never see eye to eye, both my friends who never made it home and myself would do it again to keep Americans safe no matter what their opinions may be of us. I understand that hating America is the liberal agenda these days, but you should really try rooting for this country once in a while and at the very least appreciate the men and women who are willing to defend your freedoms with their lives.
Pierre Tristam says
Gwot, you’re misreading liberals, who never claim that evil doesn’t exist (we live in its midst after all), only that it’s not our place to hunt it down where we neither belong nor can defeat it, only feed it, instigate it, amplify it, as we have done so well in so many places: recall that it was the US Marines’ presence in Lebanon that fueled the rise of Hezbollah, which then managed to kick Reagan’s troops out with that October bombing of the barracks, it was Bush’s invasion of Iraq that finally enabled Iran to take over the country it could not defeat during the Iran-Iraq war and led to the rise of ISIS, and it’s been blind American support of Saudi Arabia that’s kept a closed eye on the Qaeda-Saudi connection and the fact that most of the money and weaponry behind Sunni insurgencies anywhere in the Middle East can be traced back to the Saudis. But to your first point: as someone who has had many friends maimed and killed by those evil forces (I’m speaking of myself here, not you), I can guarantee you that those deaths, like those of your friends, have been in vain, an inexcusable waste. You don’t have to tell me you’d do it again: it is being done again. That’s the tragedy. After 20 years, almost 40 if we go back to the Lebanon debacle, we’ve learned nothing. Only to throw more blood at the problem we can’t and will never solve. You can make stupid statements along the lines of liberals hating America all you want, but it is precisely because we root for this country more than any other that we fight for it this way (arms are not the only way, veteran: they’re the last way, the most useless way). As noted in the piece, it’s no longer tenable to claim these soldiers are fighting to defend our freedoms. They are effectively doing the reverse. Not their fault. But it is yours when you continue to mask that price in lives and losses with chest-beating.
Trailer Bob says
Edith Campins…”we are becoming a third world country”?? Where the hell do you live lady?
As for the article, most of us can agree to have opinions, but when one has a total singular vision as does the author (if you will) it simply provides an insight into selfness. New word for you Pierre. Black and white never ends up with any colors…
Edith Campins says
Oh, and I forgot to add money laundering.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-sold-40-million-estate-155724850.html
MannyHMo says
Goose steps. I can see it now.
Seriously, I like to see the money spent on parade be channeled to the families of service members. The fuel that would be used on those planes (for our eyes only) be translated into cash as bonus to our homeless veterans assistance. The world knows already that the U.S. has the most powerful military. No need to brag about it. The best measure is to win a war without the fighting and killing.
tulip says
Trump just wants to have another to to feed his ego and so he can brag about how the military came out in force to “praise him”, just like North Korea and then he really got insistent upon it when he saw the military parade celebrating Bastille Day in France. Trump thinks he is the most important man ever born and constantly needs to have his ego boosted. He is the only president I ever heard of that had the senators and the House come to the White House after some bills were paseed and he had each one get up to the mike and “thank him for his wonderfulness” while he sat and reveled in the accolades. What degradation that must have been to those who had to do that. Trump talks about fake news? Well how about the fake accolades he forces others to bestow upon him or there is Hell to pay.
During George Bush Senior days there was a military parade and, at that time cost 12 million dollars. What do you think that will cost today? That money could be well spent on worthwhile things like taking genuine care of the USA and it’s people. Obviously I am totally against this parade farce and hope the Pentagon finds a way out of it.
YankeeExPat says
EL DUCE !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCwvdt0xWR4
mangia il mio culo, Donald !
gmath55 says
Pat Paulsen would say – Shut up America. Picky, picky, picky.
JimB says
Well it’s certainly no secret Pierre is a butthurt mentally ill liberal with a deep hatred for OUR PRESIDENT and no desire to try to work together or understand anyone else’s opinion.
What he has kept secret is his amount of pure cowardliness. Thank God he and his kind weren’t prevalent during the world wars.
justsayin says
Just watching the inauguration parade of Fuhrer JFK in the the early sixties, sure looks like a military parade to me. Where is the outrage on this man, remember Cuba? Kids hiding under desks in nuclear war drills.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=120wGLgCTkg&t=26s
Today we want parades with men and women wearing pink pussy hats The difference was in the sixties we were all Americans. Today we are all hyphenated Americans who think THIS country has done them wrong.
Mothersworry says
Unbelievable!! When are folks going to see through this charade of a presidency? He claims such affection for the military. He insults an ex POW repeatedly, verbally attacks a Gold Star mother for simply not saying anything. Now he wants a parade to stroke his ego. He obviously doesn’t care about the cost of this parade. All the equipment has to be trucked in from all over the country. Then there is the cost of the repairs tanks will do to the DC streets. Further he doesn’t seem to care much about our troops who rather than have a day off will spend in battle gear in the heat of DC just so he can have his parade.
He doesn’t have a clue what real patriotism is. He’d rather use the Pentagon as a party planner and our troops and equipment as props in this dog and pony show rather than take that money and spend it on PTSD treatment or the suicide prevention of our combat soldiers.
Remember it’s all about him.
DOWNTOWN says
Dear Leader?….how childish . Guess you would have referred to Hillary as ‘Her Majesty”.
layla says
But nobody has a problem with filling Washington with a bunch of idiots wearing pink vaginas on their heads? That’s costs the people millions in tax dollars to clean up the mess.
As they say, our priorities are ass backwards.
Bc. says
Pierre you should just move back to you old country- you are one sick liberal thinking Ass you won’t be missed here. MAGA 🇺🇸
Sherry says
Even FOX claims trump’s, chest beating “EGO” parade costs to begin at “12 MILLION”! Give that money to the Vets!
Concerned Citizen says
I know this is a long shot but wouldn’t it be nice if we could discuss politics like the mature adults we are supposed to be? The amount of name calling and outright disrespect on this page is amazing.
I spent 4 years in the Airforce and did my time in the Middle East. While I didn’t always agree with the reasons for being there I did my job and came home. Some of my friends in other branches of the Service weren’t so lucky.
Gone are the days of massive military campaigns with one objective and a united front. Now we have settled into low intensity conflicts spread thru different theaters. I come from a military family and had several members serve in Vietnam.
It seems like we didn’t learn our lesson from that war and are repeating it in Afghanistan and Iraq. And if that isn’t enough we have now once again gotten involved in Africa. Will we ever learn?
Instead of a massive parade costing millions of dollars we need to take care of our Veterans at home. Some who come back permanently scarred physically and mentally.
Instead of a massive parade why not make sure our troops that are deployed have up to date training and equipment to handle the job? We struggle to fight tribal societies. I cannot imagine going up against Russia or China in a major conflict.
Parades were great years ago when you needed to boost morale. Want to boost morale now? Bring home our men and women who have been fighting over seas and have been separated from loved ones for a year or more at a time. Many don’t realize the toll that extended combat ops take on not only service people but families as well.
Let’s start taking care of our own instead of frivolously wasting money on meaningless gestures.
Pogo says
@Parade it wants? Give it one
trump can launch from the end of the parade in a red Tesla roadster – up in the sky – it’s ugly Santa.
maga!
hawkeye says
Pierre ,youre America bashing is a little tiresome , let me guess ,the lebenese military parade consisted of one broken down jeep and a rifle that was never fired , just dropped one time. I have worked on military aircraft since 1984 ,I dont need to see a parade to know what our military might is, and the fact of the matter is we could have EXTERMINATED every one we have ever fought against, except for the powers that be , including,Johnson , both Bushes and obama, refused to let it happen. We had the arabs up against the wall during the 1st gulf war and could have easily sent them back to the stone age, however between Colin Powell and the rest of his politicaly correct advisors Bush 1 didnt allow it to happen.If we would have taken care of business then , 911 would never have happened along with numerous other muslim perpetrated atrocities.
Fredrick says
Yep… I was right,,,,, He tweets… the liberals melt down. He plays them like a fiddle. You people will never understand and it is why you are doomed. You ignore what is really going on, because you are afraid of it and know it will even destroy your party more than it is and you dance and spin in circles. You liberals put him in office, you had your chance and with the backing of the media and it looks like the upper levels of the FBI you failed. This is all your fault….. g
Richard says
There is only ONE war we should be involved in and that is the war against terrorism wherever that will take us to eliminate it from this world. The entire Middle East has been at war with one another for centuries and all for what. We are not going to change their ideology or attempt to form a democracy in that area. It just won’t happen. Defend our country first and help our allies second and stay out of other peoples business.
hawkeye says
Forgot about clinton in my last post
Pogo says
@Concerned Citizen
I dislike dating myself or any self disclosure in this context. But here’s a little anyway: I learned the 16 count manual of arms with an 03′ .30-06 Springfield on the parade grounds (which were known as grinders because that’s what marching for miles at a time on pavement does, grind human beings’ feet) of NTC, San Diego.
Naval Training Center San Diego
http://theanimalrescuesite.greatergood.com/clickToGive/ars/home
The most popular graffiti of my day was some version of a short timer’s lament and “Nixon’s father should have practiced withdrawal.” Look it up children. Try googling the word quagmire. Concerned Citizen is right on point – we’re still in one.
I do have to object to the notion of low intensity wars. What is low intensity about millions of deaths, millions of refugees, millions of orphans and widows, millions of land mines littering the earth, millions of items of unexpended munitions, and millions of items of expended munitions (including depleted uranium, etc) ? And all of the aforementioned has been purchased – all too often on credit – but also at the cost of important things neglected:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
President Eisenhower’s Chance for Peace speech
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chance_for_Peace_speech
knightwatch says
Layla … as opposed to say, the billions it will take to clean up Trump’s mess. We’ll have to prosecute the Trump Administration for fraud (enriching himself and his family), conspiracy to impede a lawful investigation, and collusion with a foreign government. We’ll have to clean up the environment, rebuild the State Department, HUD, EPA and OSHA, put funds back into public education, and re-regulate Trump’s his Wall Street cronies. There’s lots else to do, but you get the idea.
Edith Campins says
Notice the insults and vulgarity in the comments above? Why are trump supporters so rude? When they can’t defend their positions with logic and facts they turn to name calling and ranting.
john says
i love a parade.lets roll
tulip says
In response to concerned citizen, I agree with you about the awful language and nasty name calling that has been printed here. I was of the opinion that Pierre was rightfully not going to allow that kind of posting. Now that this is happening, how many more people will feel free to get really nasty too? A lot of people will leave this site if it becomes foul.
People have the right to express their thoughts on a subject, but I don’t think they have the right to be nasty and vile and how would some of these people that posted nasty things about Pierre in this article like it if those things were said to them. Hopefully, posts will be more carefully monitered
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a person being passionate about a subject, just tone down the language and have some respect for others and yourself.
palmcoaster says
Yeah JimB your POTUS not mine for sure. A pervert sexual abuser, a Communist puppet and traitor giving our intelligence and most confidential USA information to Russia’s Putin to benefit his election and Trump enterprises, a bully that utilizes nepotism and uses his family as advisors without the security clearance demanded from all, a tax fraud and money launderer that refused to disclose his tax records. And now he wants el Duce style military parade on our pockets. I totally agree with YankeeExpat above ” mangia mangia Donald and all his rabid base too”
Concerned Observer says
Dear Editor. You lean so far to the left, you need corrective shoes. We owe illegal aliens absolutely nothing. We owe our veterans and active duty servicemen and women EVERYTHING.
George Garrett Brose says
Parades by the military are a major butt pain for the military. They have to practice that crap for days and weeks and the public only sees it for an hour. Maybe the Dear Leader should watch film of Anwar Sadat’s last parade.