Long Island veterans look at Saturday's Army parade in D.C. with support, unease

The prospect of America’s largest military parade in decades, scheduled Saturday in Washington, drew responses this week from Long Island veterans ranging from full-throated support to deep unease.

The parade will celebrate the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army, America’s first national institution and one of the few that a substantial majority of Americans, regardless of their politics, view positively. But it will be staged in a politically charged moment, with the National Guard and U.S. Marines on the ground in Los Angeles, not long after President Trump used a Fort Bragg speech ostensibly about the semiquincentennial to make false statements about the 2020 election and denigrate his predecessor. It's also occurring on a day, June 14, that is the commander in chief’s birthday.

"There’s no doubt in my mind that the event itself will be politicized," said Kenneth Tovo, a retired general raised in St. James who led the Army’s Special Operations Command. "I have confidence in the basic judgment of the vast majority of Americans to see through all the partisanship that will probably spew out from both sides."

Tovo, who served multiple combat and peacekeeping tours, said he hoped his fellow citizens would use the occasion to "learn and reflect" on American history.

For some of Tovo’s fellow veterans, the historical frame for the parade is modern, not Revolutionary. "We’ve been spending an awful lot of time in the last 10, 25 years denigrating the military, even though we’re sending them off to get killed, and it’s about time to show our appreciation," said Robert Robesch, of Aquebogue, a Navy veteran who served in Vietnam and is a Veterans of Foreign Wars officer.

Robesch, who recalled facing protests when he returned from Vietnam, said the military should be a more visible presence in American life, though he doubted parades would sway protesters like those in Los Angeles, many of whom he believes are paid agitators. They are protesting immigration policy, not the military, but many "just do not like the military," he said.

James Weber, of Rocky Point, a former Army paratrooper who deployed in 1967 to the race riots of Detroit before he went to Vietnam, said he feared the parade would be less about a bedrock institution than about one man, the president. "I guess his base cares, and I’m sure they’re going to wave flags," he said. "But it’s not about the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army, what it has been, what it hopefully will be — it’s about this man and his aggrandizement of himself, to the tune of $45 million," the high end of estimates Army leaders have given for the cost of the event.

Weber took a dim view of military parades generally, having witnessed a huge one in 2015 in Moscow’s Red Square celebrating the anniversary of the end of World War II with "all their toys and a sophisticated tank they wouldn’t let you get near. It was a show of force."

Somewhere in the middle, uncomfortably, was Army Reserve veteran Lenore Brathwaite, commander of American Legion Hunter Squires Jackson Post 1218 in Amityville. She said she supported "any type of parade where veterans, truly veterans, are being honored and recognized," but questioned the expense when people are "suffering and trying to pay rent." A television program explaining the "history of the Army, the famous commanders, the reasons why the Army is important" would have done just as well, she said.

Saturday’s parade will include 150 vehicles, 50 aircraft, 34 horses, two mules, one dog and 6,700 soldiers from every division in the Army, according to the Pentagon. More than 400 soldiers from the New York Army National Guard will march, receiving MREs for breakfast and lunch and a hot meal for dinner along with a per diem fee of about $69, according to a Guard release.

Military parades in the United States are not unprecedented — they followed the Civil War and both world wars, and smaller-scale exhibitions of military hardware are common at Fleet Week and professional sporting events — but major ones became less frequent after Vietnam, and the last one on this scale was probably the 1991 Desert Storm parade, said Duke University professor of political science Peter Feaver, who studies the military.

"There is great value in a society remembering … that freedom comes at a heavy price," Feaver said, and in "reminding people how much they depend on an institution that itself depends on volunteer service" in an era of enlistment shortfalls.

Army planning for the anniversary started before the 2024 election, he said. "What was originally planned was more distributed across the country and was less focused on a major D.C.-based parade, without all the extra elements like tanks. All that stuff got added by this administration."

In 2018, when Trump first pushed for a grand military parade after watching one in France, the idea was shelved after a lukewarm reception from some in Congress and from senior figures in Trump’s own administration.

Four members of Long Island’s six-member congressional delegation said they would not attend, and the remaining two did not respond to a request for comment.

A spokesman for Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he would not attend.

Rep. Laura Gillen (D-Rockville Centre) said through a spokeswoman she would not attend because of long-standing plans to attend her daughter’s lacrosse tournament.

A spokeswoman for Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport) said he had been invited to the parade but could not attend because of a prior commitment.

Rep. Nick LaLota (R-Amityville), a Navy veteran, said through a spokeswoman he would not attend. But she forwarded a statement attributed to LaLota that said, in part, “A parade like this not only honors the Army’s past but helps strengthen its future.”

Representatives for Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove) did not respond to a request for comment.

Other members of Congress have also said they will not attend. “I have to be home for family business,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said when asked by a reporter this week if he planned to go to the parade.

Civilian leadership of the military appears now to support the parade, Feaver said. Meanwhile, hundreds of protests against the Trump administration are expected on Saturday in cities across the country, including on Long Island. Nationally, the parade is a partisan prism, with most Democrats and independents saying it is not a good use of taxpayer money and most Republicans supporting it, according to an AP-NORC poll.

Ty Seidule, a Hamilton College visiting professor of history who retired from the Army in 2020 as a brigadier general, said he welcomed the parade and its likely accompanying protests.

"This is a chance to talk to people about the history of this institution that is central to who we are," he said. "The most American thing you can do is have a protest and a parade together."

Others said they weren't so sure. Retired Army Major Gen. Anthony R. Kropp, from Huntington, said he supported the parade and saw in it an opportunity for more Americans to learn about the military, but that he worried about protests when "the last thing we need is more divisiveness."

Feaver, the political scientist, said the debate put the Army in a difficult position. "The military wants to be nonpartisan, sees itself as nonpartisan," he said. "This is exactly where the military doesn't want to be."

The Associated Press contributed to this story.