Would Trump military parade merely honor the REMFs of the world?

I find it somewhat odd that President Donald J. Trump would be taking inspiration from France and Bastille Day for a way to put on a great big spectacle ultimately paying tribute to himself.

This is what inspired Donald Trump to think of a military parade in the streets of D.C.

For the storming of the Bastille, which led to the ultimate overthrow of King Louis XVI, was literally a moment when the peasants of France overthrew their wealthy royal nobleman of a leader who actually supported the concept of American independence – someone who along with Marie Antoinette were most definitely not of the people.

YOU’D THINK THAT even Trump would realize that he’s the comparative figure to Louis (with first lady Melania being the equivalent of the alleged “cake eating” lady). The comparable move would be if the masses of this country (the majority of whom didn’t vote for him) were to get fed up enough to violently overthrow him.

Is that really the image Trump wants to put in the public mindset? Besides, I thought the Trump-types were the ones who openly denounced anything associated with France?

Somebody’s not thinking this all the way through. But as Trump himself said, he saw the big Bastille Day parade last year in France, saw the grand martial display of power and authority, and wishes he could have something similar to pay tribute to himself.

How Trumpian is the image of old ...

Which has led to countless numbers of people using their Photoshop software to create all kinds of goofy images portraying Trump as some sort of equivalent of the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

WHICH WOULD BE the closest you’d find to photographic images of Trump in a military uniform – for as so many have pointed out, he was of military age during the Vietnam War era, yet managed to avoid doing any sort of military service.

Heck, even George W. Bush could claim to have been in the Texas Air National Guard (although some insist he didn’t even fulfill the minimum service requirements) back in that era.

Not that I expect the ideologues who claim to value military service to mind so much – maybe they can be bought off by the image of a military parade. Forget about a Trump presidency actually accomplishing anything significant or meeting any of its promises.

... of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette?

You got a great big garish parade!!!

IF YOU’VE GOT the impression by now that I don’t think much of the idea of a parade, you’d be correct.

It’s actually mostly because I don’t really care much for parades in general. There are more sincere ways to pay tribute to someone than to stage a grand spectacle clogging the streets of the city, while expecting the masses to stand passively by.

I think those who serve in the military deserve more than a parade whose real purpose would be to pay tribute to the man with the bad combover whom many (including my sister-in-law, Vicki) refer to as the “big cheetoh.”

Perhaps it’s because I remember the two big military spectacles in Chicago during my adult life – back in 1986 and 1991. The latter was a series of parades held across the country to pay tribute to those who were in the military (including a cousin of mine) during the Gulf War of 1990.

Is this Trump's image of himself?

REMEMBER WHEN WE were foolish enough to have thought we resolved all the disarray and chaos of the Middle East in a matter of two months in Kuwait?

The former was when some types of people felt the need to finally put an end to the Vietnam era by staging parades welcoming back the troops who were so callously ignored when they really returned home more than a decade earlier.

I still remember watching that parade, and being told by veterans who actually saw combat that the crowds of former soldiers on display here were most likely the “REMFs” who never even came close to the front lines of fighting (figure out the obscenity for yourself). Is that what we’re most likely to see from a military spectacle in this Age of Trump?

DUCKWORTH: Most accurate?

If that’s the case, then perhaps Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., is correct with her latest fund-raising e-mail, in which she says troops, “don’t need a show of bravado. They need steady leadership. They need long term funding.” And if they don’t get it, perhaps someday the masses will be offended enough to revolt in a Bastille-style image against Trump Tower buildings around the country. That would be gory.

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War’s over! Where’s all the celebration? Or do we see Part Three forthcoming?

He is going to be restrained by the economy (the federal government can’t afford to do many of the things Obama dreams of) and an ongoing war in Iraq (whether we like it or not, we’re stuck in it. I wouldn’t be surprised if U.S. troops remained there on Inauguration Day in January 2013).

Chicago Argus, Nov. 5, 2008

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Part 3 someday? Image from Indymedia Ireland

Perhaps it goes to show you just how little I know at times.

Because it seems this prediction that I published in this weblog on the “Day After” Election Day in 2008 when Barack Obama woke up realizing he had managed to beat John McCain and become president-elect turned out to be inaccurate.

FOR THIS WEEKEND, the Iraq War that began back in the presidency of George W. Bush officially came to an end. History will record that the last U.S. troops left the country on Sunday, although because of the time difference it was actually late Saturday in Chicago at the moment those troops crossed over the border into Kuwait – the nation whose invasion back in the early 1990s by Saddam Hussein triggered the whole notion that we were “at war” in Iraq.

And just out of a sense of disclosure, I have a cousin, Carlos, who was in the Army back in the late 1980s and early 1990s and wound up spending a year of his service fighting to “liberate” Kuwait.

But back to the present. Weekend news broadcasts were filled with lots of feature stories showing us soldiers in their tan fatigues (the famed “chocolate chips”) saying how pleased they were to know that they survived the war and that it truly is over.

OBAMA: Ended this Iraq war. Who begins the next?

These men likely will tell stories for the rest of their lives about how they were the absolute last U.S. troops to leave the Middle Eastern nation – for now.

BECAUSE I WON’T be surprised if conditions arise in future years that cause our military to think that U.S. troops will have to return. In fact, it may well turn out that what we’re calling the second Iraq War is really just the latest chapter of tensions that have been ongoing in that part of the world for centuries, and will continue for long after this weekend.

It makes me think that the idea of considering this war “over” is a little bit short-sighted. That very mentality was running through my mind back when Obama got elected president in large part by appealing to the people who always despised the notion that U.S. troops were located anywhere in the Middle East.

But for now, I will give Obama some credit (even though I’m sure the ideologues of our society will not want to do so). He brought this military conflict to an end. For now, the body count ceases to rise.

The point I tried to make all those years ago was that anybody who voted for Obama expecting there to be an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops truly was being naïve. I knew all those years ago that a withdrawal from Iraq would take years to complete – and even then only if absolutely nothing went wrong.

THAT IS WHY I implied that the process might still be taking place in January 2013 as Obama either prepares to take a second oath to serve a four-year term as president – or tries to hold back a look of anguish as one of the GOP dreamers actually manages to take that oath while Obama looks on – just before getting the final plane ride on Air Force One that brings him back home to Chicago.

Instead, it seems to be over. All combat troops left Iraq by this weekend, and all U.S. troops are supposed to be out of the country by Dec. 31. The soldiers will be returning home in streams – and we’re likely to see countless accounts of soldiers in fatigues being mobbed by family and friends, along with some cute wife or child at the center of the mix for them.

Yet for the life of me, I’m not sure what was really accomplished by this military action of the past few years. The reports already are cropping up of political “crisis” and tensions arising. I literally won’t be surprised if Iraq War Three crops up in the next decade.

The only real question is whether it will be a “President Obama” who has to start it in a second term, or if it will be some future chief executive who gets the credit/blame for the military mess.

YES, YOU PROBABLY out early from the tone of this commentary that I was never a proponent of this particular “war,” which as far as I was concerned was declared because of the feeling by the most recent President Bush to take on “unfinished business” from the administration of George Bush, the elder.

When George W. Bush got elected president in that mess of political maneuvering that passed for an election cycle in 2000, I knew that circumstances would arise that would be used to justify an Iraq War. Even if no such airplanes had ever struck the World Trade Center or Pentagon some 10 years ago, I believe the end result would have been similar in terms of military involvement in Iraq.

So because I “expected” it, I wasn’t shocked or offended when it occurred. And as far as getting out, it always struck me that the “war” was the equivalent of a “break it and buy it” policy.

We “broke” it by getting involved with military force. I want to believe (in fact, I desperately hope) that we have fixed it well enough to justify calling this military conflict over.

BUT SOMEHOW, I suspect (and fear) that the quickie glue job that we did to repair this symbolic artifact will soon some undone.

Is somebody bound to pick this “artifact” up off the shelf and notice that it is all chipped on the side that we turned toward the wall and face away from the potential customer?

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