I was in San Francisco this past Sunday, my visit coinciding with the U.S. Navy’s annual “Fleet Week” show of a portion of its arsenal of destructiveness. The most annoying part of this demonstration consisted of a prolonged buzzing of the city by at least five “Blue Angels” FA-18 fighter-bombers. This was not one of those common air-shows conducted at an airbase where Boobus Americanus could pay an admission fee for a show: in San Francisco, the entire city was the grandstand. Whether you cared to enjoy the simulated attack or not, you were subjected to the noisiest screeching, roaring, and ear-shattering sounds – with an occasional sonic boom thrown in for good measure – as these planes flew at housetop levels for a few hours. We had to keep covering our ears as these howling menaces flew a few hundred feet above our heads. These planes fly in very close formation – they pride themselves in maintaining eighteen-inch separations from one another – which, on some past occasions, has led to deadly crashes. Had this occurred in San Francisco the other day, hundreds of innocent people might have been added to the growing list of fungible victims of American air power throughout the world. The irresponsible nature of this undertaking was evident to any intelligent observer.
This siege brought to mind an experience I had back in undergraduate college. At my university, male students were required to take two years of R.O.T.C. training. I opted for the Air Force version. Our instructor – a regular Air Force major on leave to the school – gave us an unsettling assignment. We were given detailed maps of various American cities and told to plan a bombing attack on the target chosen for us. I was given San Francisco as my targeted city, and laid out my planned assault. Was I to concentrate on the port, railroad facilities, manufacturing plants, or just an all-out Dresden-like slaughter of the Bay Area innocents?
More than half-a-century later, I still have occasion to think back to the time when a state university and the Air Force tried to train me to conduct an aerial attack on a major American city. This past Sunday was a reminder that “terrorism” – which most Americans and their government like to pretend they oppose – is the modus operandi of an ever-engorged state system. As I joined with my temporary San Francisco neighbors to protect my ear-drums, I wondered whether this was intended as just another round of statist entertainment, or a preview of more serious urban sieges. That such terrorizing acts were being carried out by people purporting to be “angels” confirmed Orwell’s understanding of how state power depends upon the corruption of language. Like the Air Force’s slogan, “peace is our profession,” the Navy has its “Blue Angels” [or, perhaps "Black-and-Blue Angels!"] with which to disguise violence as civility.
