This morning the Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden weighed in on Trump’s military parade idea, and he really doesn’t like it one bit:
A military parade is third world bullshit. We prepare. We deter. We fight. Stop this conversation.
— Robert J. O'Neill (@mchooyah) February 8, 2018
Wow. Tell us how you really feel.
Seriously though, I think most people agree with this sentiment.
However an opinion writer at CNBC seems to think this is a brilliant move by Trump:
Take a good look at the Bastille Day parade from last year, and it’s not hard to see why such an event appeals to Trump. That’s because the Bastille Day parade isn’t exactly like the Nazi or Soviet military parades of the past. The stars of the French parade aren’t the politicians or even the weapons, but the actual troops and military veterans. They dominate the parade route at every turn.
That’s the key to what makes copying such a spectacle such a positive for Trump. Polls show that America’s troops continue to be stronger supporters of this president than the public at large. U.S. military veterans are much more pro-Trump than almost any other group, with data showing they chose him over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election by a large 60 percent-to-34 percent margin.
There’s a geographic aspect to this as well. It’s not so much that blue state America doesn’t support the troops. The bigger issue is that most of blue state America seems to be generally disconnected from the military. The Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and New England regions where Trump tends to poll poorly send a significantly smaller portion of enlistees to the military than the national average. Trump strongholds in the South and rural America send a much higher proportion than the national average of their populations to the armed forces.
Active duty troops tell only part of the story. Veterans are more likely to support Trump than non-veterans and those still serving in the armed forces. It was those veterans in the key swing states who likely made the difference in the 2016 election for the Trump campaign.
Now the picture should be getting clearer: The Trump team wants to put his strongest and largest source of support in the spotlight and reward it with national attention on the July 4 holiday. It’s really a political no-brainer.
Of course, there are right ways and wrong ways to do it. Americans will be rightly spooked if the parade includes massive missiles and artillery rolling along Constitution Avenue. Tanks are probably okay, but only as long as there are troops visibly sticking out of them and being acknowledged as they are in the Bastille Day event.
But imagine a parade dominated by some of the elite military bands, Medal of Honor winners marching together, and those awesome B-2 stealth bomber and F-35 fighter jet flyovers. These are the exact same kinds of imagery America rolls out during every Super Bowl Sunday, but all too briefly when you consider there are so many other troops and veterans who never get acknowledged on a stage anywhere near that big.
That imagery also works well for Trump. Appearing with the troops with big American flags providing the backdrop is almost never a negative for any president.
The problem with this is that many believe that what Trump wants will end up looking more like a soviet era parade with missiles and aircraft than it will one that’s dedicated to the troops.
Now I don’t believe the Pentagon headed by Mattis would allow Trump to go all in with a parade that would make Kim Jong Un jealous. At least I hope not.
What I hope in the end is that if we do have a July 4th military parade, it’s all about the troops and not about missiles, bombs, and such. That would be very tacky, to say the least.