The Politics of Parades

When General Douglas MacArthur stepped off the American Military Transport plane at Atsugi Air Base in 1945, he had ordered his officers to leave thier side arms on the plane. His reasoning in the face of over one million armed Imperial Japanese soldiers who were to stand guard was to display as he put it, "Old American Swagger." In otherwords, Confidence. Such confidence projects strength. Fast forward to the age of Donald Trump where American Swagger has been replaced by Fear and Loathing and an admiration on the part of the 45th Commander in Chief for Authoritarian Strongmen such as Dutartte and Kim Jong Un instead of the leaders of Democracy. Here is a man who talks tough but made excuses as to why he would not serve his country when he was called upon during the Vietnam War. It is a cruel irony that such a man would through the help of Russian meddling find himself in the position as C&C. His failure to understand our true military might has led to his demand for our military to parade in our nations capital at great tax payer expense. While this may be the practice of the Kremlin, Beijing, and Pyongyang, this is not who we are. We know we have the most lethal fighting forces in the world. We don't need 3rd world Banana Republic displays of strength to prove it. This only shouts to our geopolitical foes in Russia that Donald Trump is doing his best to erode American Confidence and Strength.

One must hand it to Vladimir Putin for learning the most valuable lession from the fall of the Soviet Union, make your enemy spoend all his money and watch them go bankrupt. This is a lesson our enemies around the world have been learning as we waste trillions of dollars in defense projects for weapons and missions dreamed up out of fear for tomorrow might come. Putin recently proved that with the announcement of a weapon he claims to be invincible but in reality is more invisible because he is proding Trump to misspend our resources and further drive our economy into debt all while failing to protect our nation from Russian cyber attacks and proxy attacks on our troops abroad that thus far have gone unanswered.

You can't have a victory parade without a victory. George Bush learned this the hard way with his Mission Accomplished Banner. Fortunately, there is great disdain for the call for this parade that serves no prupose other than to force our military to stroke Trump's fragile ego and salute it. Forcing this iussue in the wake of cuts to services for our military veterans will come at a great political price. Both for the Republican Party that backs him and for the rest of the free world who look to us with confidence in our military as a force for good. I believe it is always darkest before the dawn and we too shall recover from Donald Trump.This will take many years to correct the damage this man is doing but it must be done. And the sooner we remove him from power and put him on Marine One for the last time, the sooner we can get back to restoring American Confidence.