Donald Trump Military Parade

That's the main reason folks have a problem with it including the vast majority of the actual US military of which I am a part. These types of things are what "bad guy countries" do. Flaunting your military might via parades through the capital with the President saluting is just tasteless and brings up images of the nations you mentioned that I highlighted.

We don't need to celebrate our military might like that. The whole world is fully aware of what the United States is capable of, we have no reason so parade our weapons of war through Washington DC....

Plus with the current shortage of military personnel and the very hectic operations tempo we military folks have more important things to do than march in some parade right now. We are critically understaffed and busier than we've been in almost a decade. The last thing we need right now if for some of us to get tasked with marching in some huge unnecessary parade that makes us look like Stalin's Red Army making the world think we are even more arrogant and "war monger" than they already think we are.

 

Not really, this parade thing is a red flag and it's not just liberals saying that. A poll from the military was conducted and something like 90% of them even said this was a bad idea and the military, especially the Army and Marines, are largely Conservative.

It's just tasteless that's all. I'm all for American pride and American military power, but a military parade through DC makes us look like the 3rd Reich or the Red Army which are comparisons that I don't appreciate.

Airshows and whatnot are fine, but military parades.....not so much. It's not about being ashamed of who we are but no we should not proudly flaunt it like that. It makes us look like aggressors and war mongers flaunting our war weapons around. There's a reason why "enemy" nations always do these sorts of things while the US doesn't. It should stay that way.

 

I dunno, I think it makes us look bad and the vast majority of the military doesn't want to do one. 89% to be exact from the recent military times poll asking about it which seems to be a pretty accurate representation seeing how that mirror the sentiments of basically everybody at work.

Here's the thing. I appreciate that the President appreciates us and wants to have a parade honoring the troops. But for one it's US who have to be in the thing and two we really are too busy to be dealing with a parade right now. We're understaffed big time and we are very busy across the board. This is the first actual weekend I've had off in two months. We are at work trying to fulfill obligations that require anywhere from 40-60% more personnel than we actually have.

We're as busy as we are mainly because of Trump and Mattis and the direction they want to take the military in, which is a good thing, but it requires a lot of work it's more work than we have actual personnel to do it. Pulling troops out of formation to go march in a parade in already critically low units across the board is a terrible idea right now.

In layman's terms, we don't have time for this **** and the only people who actually like military parades are the civilians who watch them and don't have to actually participate in parades because actually participating in military parades sucks for the participants lol.

Want to honor the troops and thank them for what they do? Give them a universal week off across the board of non-chargeable leave next month as a thank you for putting us through this ridiculous operations tempo they've had us on for the past half year comprised of twice the work and half the personnel to actually do it.

Pulling troops to go and march in a parade right now isn't going to boost morale, it's going to piss us off lol. You want to know how we feel about a parade right now then go walk into my hangar on Monday and ask some random person about it and see what they say lol.

 

Lazy? I've been to 3 wars...I would hardly classify myself as lazy.

Forgive us troops for being exhausted for being at war for the past 17 years and currently dealing with a massive troop shortage and trying desperately to continue providing adequate protection to this nation with about 60% of the bodies we actually need to do it. And spending 8 months of our time back in the states in rotational training exercises inbetween year on year off deployments to war zones.

No we aren't lazy, we are exhausted. If all of that isn't good enough and you need to SEE what you get for your money in the form of us marching down the street in some parade then that's sad and way more disrespectful than I believe you are intending to be.

We've worked 14 hours a day 6 days a week since New Years. It's not just us, this is happening across the board. Forgive us for rather wishing we had a day off inbetween all of that instead of being pulled to go march in some parade then sent right back to work again because we literally don't have the bodies anymore to give people full weekends let alone leave.

We are people too, we aren't machines. But you're right, we don't do this for us, we do it for you. And it's nice to know that you appreciate us lazy Soldiers so much.

 

And that right there is exactly why things like military parades in the United States aren't a good thing. As you said, you have totalitarian views and you like that display of military strength. We are not totalitarian, we shouldn't "like" that sort of thing.

Now granted it's no secret that the US has the most powerful military on the planet. Everybody knows that, and whether it's good or bad or whatever, we do tend to "use" our military on other people more often than basically any other nation in the world.

So saying that, it doesn't look good for us to be parading our military down the street the way the North Koreans and Iranians do....We have already shown that we WILL use our military on you if we so desire...parading it around makes us look a bit arrogant and war like. Which aren't good "views" to have of us in a world where the US has flat out invaded 2 nations in the past 2 decades and has troops stationed in 77% of the countries on the planet...

World politics is a chess game. This sort of thing sends the wrong message in my book...