Raining on the Parade

By Hank Silverberg

When I was a 15- year-old High School student in Connecticut, my father was learning to walk with canes and would soon be confined to a wheelchair. He was stricken with Multiple Sclerosis, an illness eventually linked to a chest wound he received on February 20, 1945 on the sands of Iwo Jima,  just two week after his 20th birthday.  He was getting some help from the local VA hospital and that inspired me to volunteer there. During the spring of 1970 I ran a 16 millimeter movie projector in a hospital ward of the V-A. There was no internet or cable TV so those movies were what passed for entertainment and I think they were appreciated.

The men there were all confined to their beds. Some of them were veterans of World War One or World War Two, but many had just come back from Vietnam and were not much older than me. Most of these men did not speak much. A few asked me how old I was and where I went to school, but mostly they just watched the movie. It was an experience I will never forget. There were old men crippled by decades old wounds that would eventually take their lives, and there were young men who might end up the same way. Vietnam was the wrong war at the wrong time, but the men who fought that war had nothing to do with that. America made a mistake. Opposing that war was the right thing to do, but ignoring those who fought it was a disgrace.  

I never served myself, but I have a deep respect for anyone who has ever put on the uniform of our armed forces. They honor us with their service and should be praised for defending our freedom. And they deserve much better health care than they have been getting over the last few decades. The problem has deepened as many more of our young men and women have come home from Afghanistan or Iraq.

 So, I noted with interest this week that the Pentagon has cancelled the big military parade that President Trump wanted to take place on Veterans Day. To that we should all say Hallelujah! That parade was a dumb, expensive idea and I’m glad cooler heads realized it.

The price tag would have been $92 million, about three times the initial estimate. That figure comes from the Pentagon, so don’t try to call it misleading or fake. The President wanted the parade up Pennsylvania Avenue in D-C on the 100th anniversary of the end of World War One. His inspiration was a Bastille Day parade he saw last year in France. But to many people in the United States, it seemed to be planned more like one of those big Red Square parades during the Soviet Era, or one of North Korean strongman  Kim Jung Un’s massive show of force celebrations. Or was it more about Donald Trump than the men and women in uniform?  

The United States, where the Constitution is very emphatic about civilian control of the military, has had a few big military parades in its history. The Army of the Potomac paraded up Pennsylvania Avenue after the Civil War in 1865, and there was that massive

(Victory parade in NYC,1946, courtesy of 505CRT) 

parade in New York City in 1946 to celebrate victory after World War Two. 

Those were celebrations of victory and the peace it would bring. In general, though, our parades honoring veterans tend to be low key affairs with a few men marching up Main Street in small town America where they are honored as individual heroes, rather than active duty military displayed as a show of power.  

So the purpose of the parade promoted by Mr. Trump didn’t seem right. And then there is the price tag. I heard a lot this past week about how many fighter jets or cruise missiles that $92 million could buy. But I was thinking more about how many V-A hospitals it could operate and how many veterans could be treated.

I noted also the President’s comments when the cancellation was announced. Because of his own ego, Mr.Trump could not just accept that the parade was a waste of money, and something the American people really didn’t want or need. He had to blame someone.

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

The local politicians who run Washington, D.C. (poorly) know a windfall when they see it. When asked to give us a price for holding a great celebratory military parade, they wanted a number so ridiculously high that I cancelled it. Never let someone hold you up! I will instead...

7:57 AM - Aug 17, 2018

 There he was, picking on the city he has ignored since taking office and deserts almost every weekend for one of his golf courses. Washington, D-C’s population, which does NOT have voting representation in the Congress, has been long ignored by the federal government, even after the election of some responsible leadership which has done an adequate, though far from perfect, job running the city. D-C had requested just over $21 million to cover added police and fire protection and other security for the parade. It was a reasonable request based on past events. City leaders had what I would call a restrained response to the President’s tweet.

MurielBowser

✔@MurielBowser

Yup, I’m Muriel Bowser, mayor of Washington DC, the local politician who finally got thru to the reality star in the White House with the realities ($21.6M) of parades/events/demonstrations in Trump America (sad).

8:52 AM - Aug 17, 2018 · Washington, DC

And then we all moved on to more important things like the President's vendetta against the United States intelligence community.

 But I noticed another item in the news. A new state-of-the-art veteran’s hospital has now opened in Colorado--a billion dollars over budget and lacking a center to handle Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a malady affecting hundreds of thousands of combat veterans.   

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/va-hospital-scandal/new-colorado-va-hospital-state-art-more-1-billion-over-n898091

Most of us think about veterans on November 11^th or Memorial Day.  Those with family members in the service do so more often. But the country does not need a parade to honor them. What we do need to do is provide good, free health care for them, free from stress. We owe it to them.  

             (Your comments and suggestions are welcome)

          

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