une 14, 2025, 6:00 AM EDT
By Brandon Friedman, former Army officer
When I was in seventh grade, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Iraq’s tiny, oil-rich neighbor. In response, the U.S. assembled a coalition of 42 countries to eject his army with military force ...
I had a front row seat to all the buildup, as my family lived in Shreveport, Louisiana, just across the Red River from Barksdale Air Force Base and the 2nd Bomb Wing. Every week, if not every day, I watched B-52s on the horizon as pilots practiced touch-and-go landings. I know I wasn’t the only person in Shreveport that winter suddenly filled with a mixture of pride and apprehensiveness. At the time, the U.S. hadn’t used its military like this since the evacuation of Saigon. Not only had it been largely untested for nearly 20 years, but the all-volunteer force had never been mobilized on this scale. There was this fear — almost a complex — that any major war we attempted would end up the same ...Years later, I would join the military myself and serve in a conflict for which there was no neat ending and no parade. But what that day in Shreveport taught me was that there is a time and place for military parades and displays of martial power. They don’t come around often, but they do come around. The ticker tape parades after World War II were another example, as was the Grand Review of the Armies held in Washington, D.C., after the Civil War ...
Now, 34 years after the Gulf War, America is holding another military parade. Only this time, instead of serving a purpose founded in genuine love of country, built on a celebration of communal sacrifice, we’re faced with a president hosting tanks and planes for a martial display that, officially, is to mark the Army’s birthday, but just so happens to fall on his birthday too.
President Trump’s military parade is, of course, troubling for its similarity to those that often take place in other countries like North Korea or Russia. In rare cases, such France’s Bastille Day parade, they are something of a celebration of democracy. But far more frequently, they are shows of force and expressions of belligerence. It’s arguable that they’re signs of deep-seated insecurity on the part of weak autocrats who demand them. What is inarguable is that an endless parade of tanks and missiles is often the calling card of fascists ...
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-military-parade-los-angeles-protests-rcna212962
= new reply since forum marked as read