by Eric S. Margolis
June 13, 2025
The last American military parade that I saw was the inauguration of President Dwight Eisenhower in 1953 - not counting my days in the US Army. It was a hell of a show. What impressed me the most was the giant M65 203mm Atomic Cannon that was wheeled up Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue.
I was also deeply impressed by Gen. Eisenhower. There was no huff or puff with him, no wildly inflated claims, no bluster, no efforts to lay the groundwork for a military-run regime. None of what the Soviets used to call “Bonapartism”. Just a real soldier who served America proud and became our finest president of modern times. I still like Ike.
But I also detest militarism and fake patriotic warmongering. Every spring I walk the blood-soaked battlefields of World War I in France and am sick at heart by the botchery and stupidity of the first great modern war. Having been a GI and covered 14 wars and conflicts as a news correspondent, I hate all form of militarism, flag-waving and patriotic oratory.
Except one! France’s Bastille Day Parade on 14 July. Much as I’m an ardent anti-militarist, few things thrill or move me as much as seeing France’s massed soldiers and fire-fighters marching down the lovely Champs Elysée, and the thunder of hooves of the armored cavalry of the Republican Guard. What a magnificent spectacle. It reminds me of what another great president, Thomas Jefferson, said: “every man has two homelands. His own, and France!”. Who has a beating heart that cannot be moved by the mighty strains of La Marseillaise, France’s national anthem, which was originally called “the War Song of the Army of the Rhine”.
Bastille Day marked the beginning of democracy and human rights for the world. The French Revolution also brought the Terror and Napoleonic Wars, but it was still an epochal moment in mankind’s history. Without great amounts of financial and military aid from France, the United States might not have gained its independence. Today, it might still be ruled by the same bunch of nincompoops in London who have brought Great Britain so low. Ironically, France’s gross overspending on supporting the American Revolution led directly to its own revolution of 1789 that overturned its monarchy.
This week will see a newly minted military extravaganza in Washington whose real purpose is to glorify a president who avoided military service in Vietnam due to a questionable foot problem. As a veteran, this fake triumphal parade leaves me feeling unwell. Militarized politics - just what recent past presidents have avoided.
I had been accepted to do a PhD at Britain’s Cambridge University that would have kept me out of military service. But in an admittedly Quixotic act, I enlisted in the Regular Army to serve in the infantry in Vietnam. Fate kept me in the US, teaching senior officers strategy and tactics. But I had at least done my duty as a citizen. In retrospect, Vietnam was a lousy, unjust imperial war, but I had served my country which had given a new life to both my parents.
I limped through Army basic and advanced infantry training with a broken bone in my left foot. Unlike our current commander in chief.
I wish the government would spend the estimated $45 million ear-marked for this ego fest on wounded veterans.
Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2025