President Trump has long sought a military parade, but it won’t be happening in 2018. The Pentagon announced on Thursday that the November parade has been postponed indefinitely, and won’t happen “until at least next year.”
There are reasons to doubt it will happen at all, as estimates of the cost of the parade are soaring, and appears to be drying up a lot of the interest in a gaudy display of America’s military arsenal. Those costs aren’t going to go down, only up.
Initially, the estimates were that the parade would cost about $12 million, but that number has grown nearly eight-fold since. Now, the estimation is that the parade would cost at least $92 million, and could rise even further.
The costs likely represent the heavy planned usage of warplanes at the end of the parade. The parade was planned to go along Pennsylvania Avenue, passing the Capitol, the White House, and the Trump International Hotel. The Pentagon encouraged the use of wheeled vehicles only, and no tanks to “minimize damage to local infrastructure.”
Going with that 92 Million dollar figure, based on the Pentagon’s history, I’d say it’ll be about 92 Billion by the end of the “parade”.
I have to doubt that cost is what cancelled this.
Darn. In Cannery Row, John Steinbeck’s novel, the main character, Doc, ignores a parade. I was hoping everyone would do that here.
Doc, and the boys too….
Waiting for Tweet.
Can’t they just sub-contract this parade out to the MIC? Lord knows, they have all the money.
Perhaps a parade of the Raytheon stockholders ?
Correction. They have all OUR money….. and we should take it back.
Money they hijacked from the SS “Trust” Fund.
If the US military were a more reasonable $100b/yr, or smaller, this would be no problem.
A military parade sounds grand. A space force parade would be even better. If we’ve got to waste money, waste on space!
The parade has been cancelled because it would attract attention. That’s an interesting angle.
Maybe they could save money if they just used drones and mercenaries…………errmmm, deja vu
If it really was about the money, Dave, they would have had an actual victory to celebrate… Oh, the only victors in this war are the MIC?
Have the MIC buy corporate sponsorships! “And now, ladies and gentlemen, the Colt Firearms 82nd Airborne, accompanied by a flyover of Lockheed Martin’s VMF-214 Squadron! Don’t forget to buy your official Halliburton US Army branded souvenir fanny packs made from bits of ALICE packs that were actually ON our fallen heroes when they stepped on those land mines! Each comes with a real snack pack from the KBR rations our troops eat in the field in Fuckoffanddieistan!”