Trump Asks Pentagon to Plan Military Parade
President wants Department of Defense to showcase troops and equipment in spectacle similar to Bastille Day event in Paris
President Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, joined French President Emmanuel Macron for the Bastille Day parade in Paris on July 14, 2017. Mr. Trump was so impressed that he has asked the Pentagon to stage a military parade in Washington. PHOTO: JOEL SAGET/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
By Julie Bykowicz | The Wall Street Journal
WASHINGTON—The U.S. Department of Defense is planning a military parade at the request of President Donald Trump, White House and Pentagon officials said Tuesday.
After observing the Bastille Day celebrations in Paris last year, Mr. Trump said he wanted to hold a similar parade on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, perhaps to celebrate the Fourth of July.
The French parade last July, which also marked the centennial of the U.S. entry into World War I, featured more than 6,000 service members, tanks and planes overhead in an elaborate display of military might. French President Emmanuel Macron invited Mr. Trump to watch the parade beside him.
“It was one of the greatest parades I’ve ever seen,” Mr. Trump said in September at the Lotte New York Palace hotel. “And to a large extent, because of what I witnessed, we may do something like that on July Fourth in Washington, down Pennsylvania Avenue. I don’t know. We’re going to have to try and top it.”
The Washington Post first reported the Mr. Trump had asked the Pentagon to arrange an event in the Bastille Day style. Pentagon officials said late Tuesday that plans were in their infancy.
“President Trump is incredibly supportive of America’s great service members who risk their lives every day to keep our country safe,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. “He has asked the Department of Defense to explore a celebration at which all Americans can show their appreciation.”
The last major U.S. military parade was in 1991 at the end of the Gulf War. There was a parade a few months after the end of World War II, and one a full year after the armistice that ended World War I. At the end of the Civil War there were two parades—for the eastern and western theaters.
The U.S. military doesn’t have a history of holding military parades. Parades are expensive and impractical, critics inside the Pentagon said. They demand the movement of equipment and weaponry that are rarely kept at a parade site. Moreover, a parade would require participating troops to train for months.
For some world leaders, like Iraq’s Saddam Hussein or North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, parades are designed to showcase military strength to their populace and the world. The U.S. military doesn’t need to do that, critics said.
—Gordon Lubold and Nancy Youssef contributed to this article.
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