Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Fleet Week in retrospect...
by Timothy Henry, [X]press Online
I was sitting in traffic and crawling toward the bay bridge on Thursday when I saw four jets screaming toward the San Francisco skyline. For a split second, I was terrified, and thought we were under attack. Then I remember . . . it must be Fleet Week.
What red-blooded American male wouldn’t drool over the sight of fighter-jets roaring across the sky (I’m sure there are plenty of females digging it too . . . it just seems to be more of a dude thing). Overcome by some boyish adrenaline, I pump my fist as the jets go by again, and flip through the radio in the hopes of finding “Rock you Like a Hurricane.”
Fleet Week is the Armed Forces open house – numbers of Attendance vary from ten of thousands according to NBC, to over a million, according to KQED and the San Francisco Chronicle. This years Fleet Week began on the fourth, and will end tomorrow at 4pm.
The 2007 San Francisco Fleet Week occurred during a time of stark polarity in American foreign policy, and during a long and increasingly unpopular war. Do politics prevail during such a time honored tradition (if tradition always prevailed, then we would continue to celebrate Columbus Day vs. Italian Heritage or Caesar Chavez Day)?
The Chronicle’s Carl Nolte wrote: “It is a paradox: On the one hand, there is widespread perception that San Francisco and the Bay Area are opposed to the military and all its works; on the other, the citizens of the Bay Area . . . gather in huge crowds to welcome the Navy.”
Led by supervisor Chris Daly, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors considered banning the Blue Angeles this year, sighting safety concerns stemming from an Angels crash in South Carolina in April. Daly also said immigrants from war-ravaged countries were terrified by the air-show, a claim that was confirmed on the KQED’s “Forum” on Friday. One listener E-mailed a comment saying that she used to love the Blue Angels, but that nanny from Nicaragua was terrified, because they reminded her of war, bombs, and destruction.
Daly’s measure was defeated 7-3 in September, but the debate was sparked.
Is fleet week innocuous? According to their website: “The Blue Angels’ mission is to enhance Navy and Marine Corps recruiting efforts and to represent the naval service to the United States . . .”
Military recruitment has become a contentious issue in the wake of the Iraq war – many college campuses tried to ban recruiters outright, but the supreme court ruled that schools had to allow the military, or loose federal funding. Further, the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps was eliminated in san Francisco last November by the Board of Education.
And then there’s the F/A-18 Hornet, the current vehicle of the Blue Angles – the average coast of an F/A-18 is $21 million, according to the Blue Angeles website. While the Blue Angeles are painted bright and beautiful colors, the F-18 is still an implement of war.
But a different war. Fast jets are the vestige of wars against super-powers. In the current so called war on terror, the enemy’s weapon is simple and ghastly, and the entire fleet, with all it’s firepower, has no obvious and discernable target.
Back on the freeway, the planes disappear toward the mouth of the bay, then reappear, flying parallel to traffic and dipping beneath the city while leaving a wispy trail of smoke, and describing an undulating snake as they go. The sound follows . . . a distant, window shaking rumble that consumes the air before fading, fading.
Most Iraqis, Afghans, and Bosnians have never seen an air-show. A jet flying over-head does not mean pump your fist and wave the flag . . . it means run for your life.
Links
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin
On Board of Supervisors:
http://www.sfgate.com/cg-bin
<< Home