{"id":32492,"date":"2013-05-10T15:26:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-10T14:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/hey-uncle-sam-wheres-our-red-square-parade\/32492\/"},"modified":"2013-05-10T15:26:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-10T14:26:00","slug":"hey-uncle-sam-wheres-our-red-square-parade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/hey-uncle-sam-wheres-our-red-square-parade\/","title":{"rendered":"Hey Uncle Sam: Where\u2019s our Red Square parade?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a><\/div>\n

As Russia put its military hardware on display in Red Square to commemorate the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany, the US \u2014 also a major player in World War II \u2014 kept its hyper-firepower under wraps and its people in the dark.<\/p>\n

Ever since May 9, 2008, when Moscow brought back rumbling tanks
\nand screeching jets to Red Square for the annual Victory Day
\ncelebrations, it has aroused accusations in Western capitals of
\n\u201cflaunting its military might.\u201d<\/p>\n

The charges are loaded with irony for a glaringly obvious reason:
\nThe Russian military, ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union \u2014
\nand aside from a five-day war with neighboring Georgia, who, it
\nmust be noted, attacked Russia first \u2014 has been parked at home.<\/p>\n

In the same period of time, however, the Western military junta,
\nknown affectionately as NATO, has been circling the planet like a
\npack of fat vultures looking for its next easy takeout.<\/p>\n

It seems to require little explanation as to why the Russians take
\ntheir tanks for a spin around town every May 9th: Russia lost an
\nestimated 26.6 million soldiers and civilians from mid-1941 to
\n1945, according to the Russian Academy of Sciences. Given the
\ndepths of this human tragedy, made more surreal by a simultaneous
\nsense of triumph, Russia has certainly earned the right to hold a
\nmilitary parade once a year without arousing suspicions of gearing
\nup for another shot at empire.<\/p>\n

Witnessing the Victory Day celebrations in central Moscow for many
\nyears, I began to ask myself a question: Why doesn\u2019t America drive
\nits tanks down Main Street each year, say, for Veterans Day? I
\nposed this question to an American friend of mine, and I got the
\nhaughty response: \u201cBecause America is a democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

So according to this fuzzy, feel-good logic, good democracies
\ndon\u2019t march their soldiers and showcase their latest missile
\nsystems around self-satisfied places like Washington, DC, or
\nBrussels, Belgium, because that would smack of something faintly
\nfascist. Instead, we drive our battle tanks down the main streets
\nof Baghdad, Iraq, and Kabul, Afghanistan, and call this beneficent
\nbehavior \u201cdemocracy building.\u201d Do the denizens of Washington
\nbegrudge the residents of Baghdad the lack of an annual military
\nparade? Somehow I doubt it, but Baghdad should begrudge Washington
\nthe stench of hypocrisy.<\/p>\n

Would shutting down Washington for a joyous day of military pomp
\nand parades risk exposing some uncomfortable truths about the
\npresent state of our democracy? Would watching tanks and drones
\nbuzz through town be a bit like the vampire confronting its
\nhorrible reflection in the mirror at midnight? Would such a
\nmomentous event as a military parade, coming <\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on : RT<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Russia put its military hardware on display in Red Square to commemorate the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany, the US \u2014 also a major player in World War II \u2014 kept its hyper-firepower under wraps and its people in the dark. Ever since May 9, 2008, when Moscow brought back rumbling tanks and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32493,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-32492","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}