Well turning up late for a Remembrance ceremony seems
consistent with turning up late for the wars themselves.
I think that Americans would consider it a
good thing that their government did not need to lie them into the First World War, in stark contrast to the Asquith government, but only joined after American citizens were actually killed.
I am not sure what the content of this 'memorial service' is/was but it seems to me again that criticizing Trump for being insufficiently militaristic might not be the best move here.
Then it is a good thing that that is not the move.
The memorial service was attended by the heads of government of Germany and Canada, and the head of state of France. If there was a message, apart from the ritual of memory of the fallen, it was the traditional
Armistice Day message - not the American
Veterans' Day one - of "never again". The most widely circulated image relating to the event is a
a Tweet by the account of President Macron, of him standing close to Chancellor Merkel, with the single word caption "
unis".
I'm sure that somebody could figure out a tortuous route to militarism from that starting point, but I don't take it particularly seriously.
Obama spend his 8 memorial days in Arlington (a bunch of times), in Annapolis and in Afghanistan.
Maybe that's proper.
Obama travelled to spend D-Day in Europe, by my count, at least four times.
Maybe that's proper too.
Memorial Day is different in America than Veterans'/Armistice Day.
Anyway, I don't really think that it's comparable. The
centennial of the armistice never occurred under Obama's Presidency. In America, rightly or wrongly, the concept of Armistice Day metamorphosed into something rather different in the 1950s, and it became less about the First World War memory of the event than something else. (Although it has still never turned into anything like what, say, Sedan Day became under the
Kaiserreich.) There was no real expectation for the American President to attend European ceremonies for, say, the 92nd anniversary of the Armistice. But the 100th anniversary of the event is an appropriate occasion to remember the
original event, and as such, I think it's reasonable to have a different expectation of the American President in November 2018 than of the American President in November 2017 or November 2010.
The other aspect of criticism comes from the fact that Trump was
right there, in Paris, within a fifty-minute drive, and chose not attend because the Presidential helicopter often doesn't fly in the rain. This limitation did not prevent other world leaders from attending, nor would it typically have prevented an American President from attending an event. Apparently the Trump White House is incapable of dealing with such a black swan event as rain at 53F. There are possible explanations for this. Perhaps he and his staff are incompetent and didn't have a backup plan. Perhaps he scuttled their backup plan by saying it made for an insufficiently grandiose entrance. Perhaps he simply didn't care enough to want to attend without his helicopter ride. Who knows? None of these explanations reflect particularly well on him.
Objectively, is this individual event any worse than any other ceremonial or ritual snub or error by any other American President? Not really, no. It's another tally in the ledger for Trump's general disrespect, unsuitability for the ceremonial aspects of leadership, and blatant willingness to trade on threats of war (and actual war) while refusing to acknowledge the costs of war, all of which is far greater than any American President since Johnson. Is any of that particularly new? No, which is why this incident hasn't exactly been dominating coverage, either in MSM or social media. We'll note it, be somewhat embarrassed by it, file it away, and move on.
