Benito Mussolini took a keen interest in Roman archaeology; that did not make Roman archaeology a bad thing. President Donald Trump has ordered a parade in honor of the 250th birthday of the United States Army, which does not make the parade a bad thing. But how the parade is being handled, together with the administration’s use of the Army in improper ways, is disturbing.
The United States Army deserves a celebration, as do the other armed services during their upcoming birthdays. Tens of millions of Americans have passed through the Army’s ranks, and something close to a million have died in the line of duty, while many more were wounded or taken prisoner, or suffered extraordinary hardships. We owe them a lot.
The administration, however, is orchestrating a parade not to honor service, but to celebrate power. Tanks and infantry fighting vehicles will tear up the capital’s streets as helicopters thrash overhead. Tough-guy stuff, in other words, designed to show the world that we are, in the much-overused word of the secretary of defense, lethal.
There are ironies here. The ironmongery on display is old technology, albeit continually updated and improved. The Abrams tank was designed in the 1970s and first entered service in 1980, and the Bradley fighting vehicle came online a year later. The wheeled Stryker fighting vehicle is a relative youngster, having entered service in 2001. The first Black Hawk transport helicopter entered service in 1979, and the Apache attack helicopter in 1986. Some really modern military hardware might include a flock of hundreds of drones, but that doesn’t provide the same kind of visual for a civilian population that has seen the aerial displays at Disney World. Inadvertently, what is being put on display is the Army’s repeated modernization failures as much as its successes.
Nor is this hardware relevant to the strategic choices the Trump administration has avowed, leaving Europe and the Middle East and focusing on the Indo-Pacific. Tanks will not persuade China to keep the People’s Liberation Army Navy behind the first island chain. This is about preening for the American public and indulging a kind of juvenile fascination with big, noisy armored vehicles.
Trump and his appointees do not understand this country’s real strengths. If they did, they would not attempt to destroy the great research universities that have done so much to create the scientific base that has been indispensable to America’s military power. They do not know, because they are exceptionally ill-informed, that it was the mobilization of scientific personnel from America’s universities by Vannevar Bush (of MIT) and James B. Conant (president of Harvard) that helped give the United States its technological edge during World War II.
If the draft-evading president and disgruntled former National Guard major running the Department of Defense better understood the American military, they would know that by sending National Guardsmen (and now Marines) to deal with riots when neither the governor of the state nor the mayor of the city concerned want them, they are courting danger. They would not promise, as Trump has, the use of “heavy force” against protesters. They would not, in other words, anticipate, almost with glee, the prospect of Americans in uniform shooting their fellow citizens. For that matter, they would know that deploying thousands of military personnel to the southern border disrupts training for war, which they supposedly value highly.
The Army reportedly wanted this parade. It is, of all the services, the one that is keenest to be identified with the American people, the most wounded when it feels rejected by or distanced from them. The other services have always preferred volunteers in wartime and usually get them; the Army is, ultimately, the most representative service. One can understand the desire to observe this milestone, particularly after the debilitating defeat the United States suffered in Afghanistan and its equivocal success in Iraq. In some ways, the Army is making a bid for reassurance here.
No matter: A parade on this anniversary should remind the American people of how the Army won our independence, preserved our Union, crushed a rebellion fought in the name of slavery, and liberated large parts of Europe and Asia. A worthy parade would include storied units whose heritage goes back to the founding of the country. Soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Regiment, the “Old Guard,” established in 1784, should march by, as might other, even older, units such as the 101st Field Artillery Regiment of the Massachusetts Army National Guard, the “Boston Light Artillery,” founded in 1636.
Famous and familiar units—the 1st Division (the “Big Red One”) and the 101st Division (the “Screaming Eagles”)—will no doubt be represented. But so, too, should units that capture, yes, the diversity of the American military. Soldiers representing the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, which was composed of free Black Americans, and some of the units of U.S. Colored Troops, who made up about a fifth of the Union Army by the end of the Civil War, should be there. Abraham Lincoln’s words, written in 1863, might be recalled: “And then, there will be some black men who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation; while, I fear, there will be some white ones, unable to forget that, with malignant heart, and deceitful speech, they have strove to hinder it.” (President Trump might reflect on those words before renaming American bases for secessionist officers who betrayed their allegiance to the Constitution.)
The Oneida and Stockbridge Indians who served alongside fellow Americans fighting for independence from Britain should be represented, among the many Native Americans from tribes across the country who proudly fought for the United States. And the extraordinary 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which was composed of second-generation Japanese Americans, many of whose parents were then interned in camps in the Southwest, and yet which became one of the most highly decorated units in the Army during the Second World War.
The Army, throughout its history, has been the great equalizer. As the sociologist Charles Moskos once pointed out, in the 1950s and ’60s it was one of the few institutions in which Black men were routinely giving orders to white ones. The experience of common military service was humbling for some, elevating for others, and helped forge a common identity. We should honor that, as we honor the work of liberation that has so often been part of the Army’s mission.
The Army has much to celebrate—its history, its values, its accomplishments. Fetishizing its killing instruments, shutting down the capital’s streets for tanks, and threatening protesters with violence is as wrong as it is deeply ignorant. Worse, it will undermine the tribute a grateful American public should properly pay to those who have, over the centuries, defended our freedom with blood and sweat and brought that same inestimable gift to many others around the world.
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