One reason we don't have big military parades in this country...

[TeamPooka]

If you show off all that hardware, tanks, planes, missiles, bombs and fancy stuff etc eventually the people realize they are paying for all that shit.
the military industrial complex likes staying in the background and collecting checks.

[tanyev]

1. Do our troops even practice the fancy useless stepping it would take to impress DOTUS?

I hope their time is better used.

[TeamPooka]

2. maybe in boot camp.

[atreides1]

5. No

The fancy stuff is done by units like the USMC Drill team or members of the US Army Old Guard! Most regular field units don't have time for any of that!

[TomSlick]

20. Nope.

Soldiers learn basic "dismounted drill" in basic training. Officers, in the service academies or ROTC. After that, most soldiers find themselves marching once in a blue moon - like a change of command. It generally ain't pretty. If you want fancy marching, call the Old Guard.

Then again, marching in a straight line in a parade is easy. There won't be any fancy counter columns or such. All it takes is staying in step,remembering that "dress is right and cover down, thirty inches all around," and how to execute "Eyes Right."

That being said, it is a monumental waste of time and neither what we pay soldiers to do nor what they signed-up for. I can't begin to imagine the time that will be wasted spiffing-up M1 tanks to make them "parade ready." The advertised weight of an M1A2 Abrams tank is 72 short tons (65 t). I'm excited to see what a few dozen tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue does to the pavement and underground utilities.

As a retired JAG, I'm curious which "pot of money" is to be used to fund this extravaganza and if there is going to be a violation of the Anti-Deficiency Act.

[tanyev]

21. Interesting. Thanks to both of you.

[UTUSN]

3. Excellent point. I was thinking something silly like: Civilians are boss of the military.

[bobbieinok]

4. Did T come up with parade idea on his own? Who suggested it to him?

[TeamPooka]

8. They had one in Europe while he was there and has wanted one ever since.

[bobbieinok]

14. Sooooo--- monkey see, monkey do

Child X has toy, child Y grabs it or yells til someone buys same toy for him.

Dump your poli sci major, kids. The future is in child psych (with minor in abnormal psych?).

[irisblue]

15. He wanted one for his ignaugral as well.

I fo not think he is aware of Bastille Days meaning, nor Anwar Sadat in 1981 or that there was one in DC in 1991 after Gulf War 1.

[bobbieinok]

18. T isn't a human being. He's just pure ego

[bobbieinok]

19. Hadn't heard that about inaugural. Like many REAL Americans, I was still in shock.

[Ferrets are Cool]

6. When will they realize that they are paying for all those stadium flyovers AND

that HUGE waste of money called the Blue Angels?

[exboyfil]

7. One of the networks should run a crawl showing the expense

of the various pieces of military equipment and put it into terms that individuals can understand.

For example 2,456 F35s cost $406B.

The entire annual production of wheat in Kansas would purchase 7.6 F35 fighters. A single fighter now costs 44 million bushels of wheat. I wonder what Eisenhower would say? It was a 1/2 million in his day.


Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.[1][5]

[TeamPooka]

9. That is a great idea!

[moondust]

10. Military parades

are generally held by more insecure countries to make an impression upon other countries and domestic populations: "See how big and powerful we are! Don't mess with us!" The U.S. is the very last country on Earth that needs to do that and the whole world knows what a stupid and foolish waste it would be. Smarter administrations knew better than to flaunt the U.S. as the world's foremost bully.

[TeamPooka]

11. On the other hand, Donald Trump has a tiny penis.

[moondust]

12. LOL

Dear Leader may figure a big military parade will intimidate the world enough to make them stop laughing at him.

[MineralMan]

13. Trump will be disappointed that our troops don't Goosestep

like they do in all those dictatorships. In fact, he may be outraged.

[erronis]

16. All the REALLY expensive stuff in in the black budgets. And we can't show those.

Maybe a few jeeps or decrepit Abram tanks (oh, we left all of them "over there".)

If we paraded our stealth armaments down Constitution Avenue, no one could see them. Of course they have paid for them, many times over without any signs of benefits.

Just like the emperor of fable, the wannabe emperor pigeon of the US has no clothes.

[former9thward]

17. Not really true.

The military does air shows all over the country. Those planes are alot more expensive than anything in a parade.