I loathe the Blue Angels. Always have. Maybe it’s the screaming noise pollution. Or maybe it’s the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars wasted on what is essentially a PR stunt. I used to think it was mostly those things, when for the past 10 years, I have had to brace myself for oohs and ahhs on the streets of San Francisco when the Angels come to town.
But now I hate them even more, and less. More because I now have a cousin who’s an Air Force pilot who’s flying real fighter jets in a real war in Iraq. It’s one thing to waste millions of dollars during peacetime, but wholly another to do so when we are sinking hundreds of billions into a war of desperation.
And less because, well, the Armed Forces are desperate for recruits. So the show of speed and acrobatics serves an actual purpose these days. The military needs to spread the patriotic flame amongst everyday citizens, whether it’s the Navy’s Angels above the Golden Gate or the Marines handing M16s to kids in Times Square. Without a draft recruiting tactics have to become more and more creative. I am not hoping for an onslaught of enlistments necessarily, but it would be nice if we all woke up and realized what the stretch of our military means for those currently fighting, and, who knows, the buzz of a fighter jet might be just the thing to wake us up.
