“A military parade is third world bulls—,” O’Neill tweeted Thursday. “We prepare. We deter. We fight. Stop this conversation.”
Robert O’Neill, the former US Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden in a 2011 raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, has weighed in on President Donald Trump’s idea to have a military parade — and he’s not happy.
“A military parade is third world bulls—,” O’Neill tweeted Thursday. “We prepare. We deter. We fight. Stop this conversation.”
Trump has instructed the Pentagon to draw up plans for a parade, but the content, location, and timing of such an event have not been announced.
O’Neill joins a chorus of US military veterans expressing opposition to the idea of a parade, and of US pundits who have pointed to Trump’s desire for a parade in likening him to a dictator.
In later tweets, O’Neill acknowledged that the US has previously held military parades. And in a reply to another Twitter user, he asserted that Russia and France — which regularly hold them — were third-world countries because unlike the US, they couldn’t take over the world.
Historically, “Third World” refers to countries that aligned with neither the West nor the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The term has since taken on a broader meaning to describe economically developing nations.
In another tweet, O’Neill made clear his idea of a military parade befitting the US: the so-called Thunder Run, the US military’s 2003 attack on Baghdad that quickly took the city.
b:3/We had a parade once. It was 2003 and we called it a Thunder Run. Someone remind Vladimir ….9:44 PM – Feb 8, 2018931215 people are talking about this