So the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the US Army will not be a day that will live infamy. Nor will it be one many Americans will recall with pleasure, in part because it coincided with the birthday of President Trump, a man who generates some sort of veneration from his MAGA supporters and a reaction known as TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome, from others. No vaccination is known that will prevent the onset of either disease, leaving those immune to both looking for a candidate.
The President’s decision to order out this parade enabled him to join the rather exclusive club of Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, men he says he ‘respects’, ‘likes’ and calls ‘a great leader’, respectively. His initiation fee to become a member of this club comes to up to $45 million, with $16 million to be used to repair streets damaged by tanks. But, hey, it’s a business expense, and so is charged off to the taxpayers. The significance of the event tells us a great deal about what is going on in America today.
It has changed. This was not the first show of military hardware at parades in the nation’s capital. It was not unusual for the military to be featured at Presidential inaugurations, and the parade ordered by President H.W. Bush in 1991 to celebrate the success of the war to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait drew no protests, Arizona State University history professor Brooks Simpson told CBS News. Those days are gone, probably forever.
But plus ça change, as they say. Some 34 years ago the New York Times’s Anthony Lewis was not pleased by George H.W. Bush’s decision to celebrate the success in driving Hussein from Kuwait, ‘… A celebratory parade would be inappropriate. Fireworks while Kurdish babies die?’ Today’s mainstream media are largely disapproving. The New York Times finds the event particularly inappropriate at a time when the President has taken charge of California’s national guard, without the approval of Gavin Newsom, its governor and a leading candidate for the approbation of those Democrats who will nominate the party’s candidate for the presidency in 2028.
The differences between the American event and those in China, Russia and North Korea are more profound than the similarities. Whereas Trump faced a nationwide protest by millions of Americans free to make their voices heard, neither Xi, nor Putin, nor Kim were troubled by protesters, that being an occupation with lethal results in those countries.
And the marchers were dissimilar in a way that speaks volumes about the difference between America and despotic regimes. The soldiers marching in Washington were volunteers, those participating in parades in China, Russia and North Korea are largely conscripts, with Russia’s treatment of its soldiers made clear every day in Ukraine. The Americans interviewed on television, and some that I know, expressed pride in participating in the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the US Army that has kept us free after removing the British yoke in what we call our War for Independence.
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