(Longtime readers—back to the BoWilliams.com days—may detect some blatant self-plagiarism here. As always, if you are ever unhappy with your IThinkThatWasBo.com experience, your full purchase price will be cheerfully refunded.)
I am a lifelong supporter of the U.S. military. I deeply appreciate its fine people and the freedom they secure with their sacrifices. I further understand that they use fantastic machinery as part of that effort.
But there is a very big difference between, say, my children checking out a tank on static display at an appreciation event and that same tank rumbling through the streets of the capital to the sounds of cheers and patriotic music.
The military parade is a mainstay of crackpot dictators with ridiculously adorned “military” uniforms and fists in the air (and yes, for the record, I think it was an extremely poor choice for France too). They are, as Garry Kasparov poignantly noted, what weak leaders do to try to appear strong.
We must never lose sight of why we have a strong military. Part of that strong military are these weapons that will be on display in Trump’s parade. These things are fantastic, but they are also terrible. They are some of the most purpose-built machines in the world, designed to deliver death and destruction efficiently and effectively.
But do we build and possess them hoping to deliver death and destruction with them? Of course not. We build and possess them hoping that we won’t have to. We should appreciate that we have these things. But appreciation need not be celebration.
A military parade of the sort Trump envisions, and will apparently actually deliver this time, is not consistent with what American values should be.