Snopes and the "currently viral on Facebook" Dwight D. Eisenhower quote about "military parades"

[Miles Archer]

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/eisenhower-military-parades/

President Donald Trump’s reported request to create a grand military parade caused controversy in early 2018, with critics condemning the idea as “authoritarian.” Others urged tolerance of the plan, pointing out that previous U.S. presidents such as John F. Kennedy and Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower had included troops and weaponry in their inaugural parades.

Against this background, a widely shared meme emerged in February 2018 containing a purported quotation from General Eisenhower which would lend support to those critical of Trump’s proposed parade:



This statement appears to be not quite a direct quotation by Eisenhower, but rather a paraphrasing of the general-turned-president’s position on military parades, which originated in remarks made by the renowned presidential historian Michael Beschloss.

In an interview with NPR’s “All Things Considered” broadcast on 7 February 2018, Beschloss pointed out that previous Commanders-in-Chief had held military parades as recently as 1991. However, he noted a distinction between victory parades celebrating national triumphs and inaugurations and the possibility of such a parade’s taking place under President Trump outside of those circumstances:

During the inaugural parades for Harry Truman, all the way up to John Kennedy, you had tanks, you had Pershing and Nike missiles and things like this, and at the end of many of our wars — from [the] Civil War, World War I and II, [the] Gulf War — you would have parades in Washington and sometimes in New York.

But to have a parade like this in Washington without an event like that, that’s a little bit outside our tradition.

During the Cold War, Eisenhower’s aides suggested to him that the United States should emulate and rival the grand military parades frequently held at that time by the Soviets. Eisenhower rejected the proposals, according to Beschloss:

Eisenhower said ‘Absolutely not. We, the United States, are seeking peace, we are the pre-eminent power on earth. For us to try to imitate what the Soviets are doing in Red Square would make us look weak.’

[PSPS]

1. Ike is certainly considered off-the-left-edge wacky on today's wacky left-right spectrum.