Funny, Under Obama Lotsa Folks Thought a Military Parade Was a Swell Idea

The effect that President Trump has on a lot of people never ceases to amaze me. When, earlier this week, it was announced that Trump wanted a big honking parade in Washington, D.C. the number of people that I didn’t expect to come unglued literally shat themselves. You’d have thought that the end of the world had just been announced. Dan Spencer and I took the same view, more or less.

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Before Trump was president, having a military parade wasn’t considered a threat to the republic, in fact, it was considered to be rather unremarkable.

In 2014, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called for a welcome home ticker-tape parade for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, calling it a “longstanding American tradition.”

“With the war in Afghanistan winding down, now is the time to keep with longstanding American tradition and kick off a campaign for the first New York City welcome home parade for troops that served in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Schumer, now the Senate minority leader, said, according to The New York Daily News.

But Schumer wasn’t the only Democrat who once backed a military parade.

Liberal New York Mayor Bill de Blasio backed Schumer’s call at the time, saying the Big Apple would proudly host such an event:

“The brave men and women who have selflessly served our nation with courage and skill in Iraq and Afghanistan deserve a recognition for their sacrifice,” de Blasio said. “I stand with Senator Schumer in his call for a parade to honor our veteran heroes, and New York City would be proud to host this important event.”

The dishonesty in the anti-parade argument is just palpable. The opponents claim, without a whit of evidence, that the parade would be to honor Trump:

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“In the past, we have held military parades to celebrate major national events such as the Gulf War or the end of World War II, as achievements by the American people who fought in and supported those efforts. A military parade like this — one that is unduly focused on a single person — is what authoritarian regimes do, not democracies,” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said according to Politico.

“Because authoritarian regimes like Russia and North Korea hold massive military parades does not mean that we must as well,” fellow California Democrat Ted Lieu said.

In the nation’s capital, the Democratic-controlled D.C. Council indicated they would put the brakes on any such effort, and implied that President Trump (and by extension, French President Emmanuel Macron) was a despot.

“Despots call their opponents traitors and treasonous,” Phil Mendelson, the chairman of the D.C. Council, tweeted. “And despots like military parades. A military parade in our District of Columbia is not part of our country’s democratic ideals.”

As National Review’s David French points out, there are all kinds of reasons to have a parade:

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What the opponents are actually against is any kind of display of national pride so long as Trump is president. Once you realize that and stop listening to the bellyaching and carping about high-minded principles the arguments actually become quite sane.

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