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Iraq War Vet A Military Parade Is Exactly What Our Nation Needs
President Donald Trump�s desire to hold a military parade to honor the U.S. military
has predictably drawn widespread hysteria among the liberal media and Democrat politicians
alike.
That is one reason, if one was needed, to go ahead with the parade.
There are seven others: loyalty, duty, respect, honor, integrity, personal courage and selfless
service. These are the seven core values every U.S. Army recruit learns during basic training,
and they are the values that the left is sadly lacking.
A military parade, of the kind the French can only dream of, is exactly what the nation
needs right now to unite us and demonstrate to the world that we have the most powerful
military muscle the world has ever known.
Before Trump came to office, we witnessed eight years of an administration that wanted
to tell the world that America was in retreat and duly cannibalized our armed forces.
The result, under President Barack Obama�s watch, was the proliferation of nuclear weapons,
the flaunting of international humanitarian norms by tin-pot dictatorships and the abject
chaos spread by terrorist organizations that only grew in strength and number.
Trump came into office to arrest America�s seeming impotence in the face of a belligerent
world. A military parade would be the perfect rejoinder to our enemies who think we are
done.
The left will have you believe that a parade would symbolize an authoritarian turn and
an end to American exceptionalism, as one columnist for the New York Daily News put
it. What an odd place to locate American exceptionalism � not in our Declaration of Independence
or in the Bill of Rights, but in our only recent and relative absence of military parades.
Let�s get this out of the way: The United States regularly holds military parades across
our great nation to honor our veterans and to remember those who sacrificed their lives
defending us.
More than that, as recently as 1991, at the end of the first Gulf War, President George
H. W. Bush honored our servicemen and women with a parade in Washington, D.C., that drew
a crowd of 200,000 people at a cost of $12 million.
That National Victory Celebration saw tributes pour in from across the nation for our troops,
with armored vehicles and missile systems rolling on the streets of Washington and New
York while stealth fighter planes flew across the skies above. Patriot missiles, M270 multiple
launch rocket systems and M109 self-propelled howitzers were towed down Pennsylvania Avenue
as a Harrier jump jet landed on the Mall.
The almost 27-year absence of military parades in the intervening years is because few recognize
that America has won clear and decisive victories in conflicts around the globe.
Threats like the Islamic State group, which took over vast swaths of territory in the
Middle East, have scattered across the deserts and into the protection of European welfare
systems like the vermin they are
Indeed, in 2011, even Obama approved the the idea of a ticker-tape parade in New York City
to honor veterans of the Iraq War. At the time, MSNBC�s Rachel Maddow said she supported
the idea, declaring: �I would go, and so would everyone I know.�
Not anymore.
Today, those same voices decry Trump as a neo-Napoleon or an authoritarian in the making.
This hysteria, as is often the case with the self-hating left, completely misses the point.
A show of military might is exactly what the country needs right now.
In this fractious era, the United States military is one of the few, if not the only, institutions
left that the majority of our population loves and admires. Americans across the political
spectrum understand that the military helps keep our country, families and future safe
and free.
More than that, in a world that continues to see threats from Iran to North Korea, a
military parade would be a signal to the world that America is back, baby, with our hands
untied and standing up like armed giants on the world stage.
Mathew Davis is an Iraq War veteran and a lifelong conservative who works as a freelance
writer and web developer in Phoenix. He served his country proudly for eight years in combat
before returning to build a home in his state of Arizona as a husband and proud father of
three children. He holds a bachelor�s degree in engineering and is a lifelong supporter
of the Cardinals.