HOLIDAY/MILITARY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Congress members of both parties on Wednesday [2-7-18] criticized President Donald Trump’s desire for a grand military parade through the streets of Washington, D.C.
The Pentagon is reviewing options, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said a day after reports that Mr. Trump had requested the military begin planning a spectacle akin to what the president witnessed at Bastille Day celebrations in Paris last year… White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president wanted to show the pride that Americans have in the U.S. military and its servicemembers’ sacrifices.
As lawmakers on Capitol Hill hashed out a spending deal that would raise defense spending by $80 billion through the rest of the fiscal year and $85 billion in fiscal year 2019, critics said a parade would drain critical personnel and monetary resources.
A group of Democratic senators wrote in a letter to Mr. Mattis that with Americans still in harms way overseas, ‘every penny of the millions of dollars that the parade would cost and every second of the tens of thousands of personnel hours its execution would require, should be devoted to the most essential missions of the Department of Defense.’…
The last major military parade in the U.S. was held in 1991 after the victory over Saddam Hussein’s army in the Gulf War. About 200,000 people viewed the parade in Washington that featured tanks, armored personnel carriers and fighter jets. It cost $12 million dollars. Many Washington officials spoke against the idea, concerned about the impact such a parade would have on traffic in the nation’s capital, and out of opposition to the president.”
-Chris Gordon, “Trump’s Request for Military Parade Criticized as Costly,” The Wall Street Journal online, Feb. 8, 2018 07:15pm