When I was in seventh grade, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Iraq’s tiny, oil-rich neighbor. In response, the U.S. assembled a coalition of 42 countries to eject his army with military force.
Looking back, the success of Operation Desert Storm may have seemed inevitable. But at the time, to most Americans, the Gulf War was anything but a foregone conclusion. In fact, early 1991 was a white-knuckle period for a country still traumatized and reeling from the Vietnam War. That perception was only heightened living with a mother whose cousin had been killed at Long Khanh in 1969.
What that day in Shreveport taught me was that there is a time and place for military parades and displays of martial power.
I had a front row seat to all the buildup, as my family lived in Shreveport, Louisiana, just across the Red River from Barksdale Air Force Base and the 2nd Bomb Wing. Every week, if not every day, I watched B-52s on the horizon as pilots practiced touch-and-go landings. I know I wasn’t the only person in Shreveport that winter suddenly filled with a mixture of pride and apprehensiveness. At the time, the U.S. hadn’t used its military like this since the evacuation of Saigon. Not only had it been largely untested for nearly 20 years, but the all-volunteer force had never been mobilized on this scale. There was this fear — almost a complex — that any major war we attempted would end up the same.
Of course, the fears were unfounded. Saddam’s military fled Kuwait in a matter of weeks and President George H.W. Bush wisely chose not to press the effort by toppling the Iraqi government. Instead, tens of thousands of U.S. troops returned home that spring and summer to cheering crowds. There was a national sigh of relief.
In Shreveport, my entire middle school flooded outside the morning the bombers returned. We’d been told they would fly directly over the city. And sure enough, they did. Low and slow, B-52 after B-52 cruised over the center of town. Thunderous cheers and applause rose as each aircraft passed by.
That parade in the sky was cathartic for many people. It served a purpose. There was a perception that America was reclaiming a sense of pride, not only in its military, but in itself.
Years later, I would join the military myself and serve in a conflict for which there was no neat ending and no parade. But what that day in Shreveport taught me was that there is a time and place for military parades and displays of martial power. They don’t come around often, but they do come around. The ticker tape parades after World War II were another example, as was the Grand Review of the Armies held in Washington, D.C., after the Civil War.
Now, 34 years after the Gulf War, America is holding another military parade. Only this time, instead of serving a purpose founded in genuine love of country, built on a celebration of communal sacrifice, we’re faced with a president hosting tanks and planes for a martial display that, officially, is to mark the Army’s birthday, but just so happens to fall on his birthday too.
It’s unclear where this country goes from here, but U.S. political and military leaders need to make a choice.
President Trump’s military parade is, of course, troubling for its similarity to those that often take place in other countries like North Korea or Russia. In rare cases, such France’s Bastille Day parade, they are something of a celebration of democracy. But far more frequently, they are shows of force and expressions of belligerence. It’s arguable that they’re signs of deep-seated insecurity on the part of weak autocrats who demand them. What is inarguable is that an endless parade of tanks and missiles is often the calling card of fascists.
And that’s where we now find ourselves. This use of the U.S. military is horrifying for a specific reason. It’s not simply because he’s showing off the hardware. It’s horrifying because the parade serves as a mirror, reflecting where we are as a nation.
The worst possibilities we could infer from Saturday’s unwarranted, Kremlin-style parade are now flying low and slow in the parade of headlines across our news feeds.
To counter peaceful protests, the Trump administration has federalized thousands of California National Guard troops in opposition to the governor — something that hasn’t been done in 60 years. On Thursday, a U.S. district judge deemed the federalization “illegal” and returned control of the guardsmen to the state, though an appeals court temporarily halted the order after the Trump administration appealed.
The president also ordered 700 active duty Marines into Los Angeles. One doesn’t need a law degree to reach the same conclusion as California officials: that this is an egregious violation of the Posse Comitatus Act — the law which severely limits how the federal government can use military personnel to enforce domestic policies.
Earlier in the week, Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Congress, “We’re entering another phase … where the National Guard and Reserves become a critical component of how we secure that homeland.”
Taking it still further, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Thursday, “We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.” When Sen. Alex Padilla rose to question that antidemocratic view, Secret Service agents forcibly removed him from the room.
It’s unclear where this country goes from here, but U.S. political and military leaders need to make a choice, and they need to make it now. Are we going to slip further into authoritarianism, where laws are imposed by fiat and enforced with military might, or will we fight with everything we have for the republic?
CORRECTION (June 15, 2025, 9:15 p.m.): An earlier version of this article misstated who was president during the Gulf War. It was George H.W. Bush, not George W. Bush.
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