Veterans Group Targets Airshows

The San Diego Veterans for Peace say they are embarking on a five-year effort to “change public understanding of what the Miramar Air Show is actually all about.” The show “celebrates the skills and machinery that exist to kill, maim and destroy … [and] serves as a misleading recruiting tool for our unsuspecting youth,” the veterans say.

when, in reality, the show is the sound of freedom. I salute the vets service and sacrifice and while no sane person wants war it is sometimes necessary to protect our way of life and freedoms. the world would now be a very, very dark place without the USA and it's military.
 
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rk911 said:
when, in reality, the show is the sound of freedom. I salute the vets service and sacrifice and while no sane person wants war it is sometimes necessary to protect our way of life and freedoms. the world would now be a very, very dark place without the USA and it's military.
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Yup we don't need Iran attacking Hawaii like Germany did! :mad3:

Politics are one thing, but we need to support our military.
 
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Maybe they can have the guy who used to be a good quarterback for the 49'ers lead the parade.

Cheers
 
That is odd. I always thought airshows were about airplanes and pilots but I guess I need to rethink that? I guess airplanes are only for murder and killing.. Who would have thought.

I think someone has been drinking the old "Jim Jones Kool-aid" to come up with that view of aircraft.
 
Well, it does exist to kill and destroy. The maiming is just incidental. But ya know, some people just need killing. . .

Probably sincere folks, just misguided, maybe assuming everyone else shares their moral compass - human dignity, live-and-let-live, peace as a goal, etc. But various clumps of humans have different principles; an ISIS guy with a 10 year old girl as a sex slave would be outraged if you labeled him a sick, twisted, depraved, piece of crap. Or suggested that burning a POW to death was an offense before man and God. So, sometimes you just gotta bring a little Hellfire down on 'em (like what I did there?)
 
I miss the destroying and killing parts.
Not so much the maiming.
Maiming indicates a sub-standard performance, and should be addressed in the performance review, and corrective action taken.

I probably won't get asked by the Lotus Eating Veterans For Peace folk to join, will I?
 
Acrodustertoo said:
...I think someone has been drinking the old "Jim Jones Kool-aid" to come up with that view of aircraft.
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don't forget SF City Supervisor John Avalos who wanted to ban the Blue Angels from flying over the city...
It’s about them crashing and hitting a building — a place where people live,” Avalos told the Chronicle. “It’s about the terror that they cause in people when they strafe neighborhoods. That’s something I hear about all the time when Blue Angels fly overhead."
 
Shepherd said:
I miss the destroying and killing parts.
Not so much the maiming.
Maiming indicates a sub-standard performance, and should be addressed in the performance review, and corrective action taken.

I probably won't get asked by the Lotus Eating Veterans For Peace folk to join, will I?
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Me neither. I absorbed the attitude being raised by a serving Marine officer; dad retired when I was 16.
"United States Marine Corps. When it absolutely, positively has to be destroyed overnight."
 
rk911 said:
don't forget SF City Supervisor John Avalos who wanted to ban the Blue Angels from flying over the city...
It’s about them crashing and hitting a building — a place where people live,” Avalos told the Chronicle. “It’s about the terror that they cause in people when they strafe neighborhoods. That’s something I hear about all the time when Blue Angels fly overhead."
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Huh. Never heard anything about the Blue .angels flying low and shooting up neighborhoods . . . Maybe the good Sup doesn't know the definition of "strafe." Yah, that's it, the City Sup didn't get a quality education!
 
Hank S said:
Huh. Never heard anything about the Blue .angels flying low and shooting up neighborhoods . . . Maybe the good Sup doesn't know the definition of "strafe." Yah, that's it, the City Sup didn't get a quality education!
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Regardless of verbiage, they can buzz/fly low/whatever over my neighborhood any time.
 
This thread will probably get the ban hammer, but nevertheless...

I have a friend who grew up somewhere A-10s were used. He saw what civilians caught in that looked like. Or so he says.

Anyway, I can understand his dislike of my photo of one with "Brrrrrt!" as the caption.

Doesn't mean I'll stop posting such photos or anything, but I can understand where he's coming from.

Whether all our undeclared wars other than one in my lifetime are justified, that's for the history books to decide... And I know the winners usually get to write whatever they want in the history books. I don't kid myself about that. Mostly because the other side is often very very dead.

We also know our government rarely tells us the entire story, but does like sending those auto bill pays for it all on April 15th.

I do love me a good airshow and air power demonstrations. Blues especially. But I also don't believe wholeheartedly that a massive war machine with forward bases in over 100 locations in foreign lands is necessarily always used for good. Or that good doesn't come with bad.

I also don't know any military folk who don't recognize the hell they're unleashing with a press of a trigger or trigger switch. Only they and the politicians know if the order to shoot was just. And even then, they don't always know. Sometimes they just know if they don't, the target will kill them instead.
 
Doesn't really matter in the end. Having once been stationed at Miramar, having lived in SD, and having stood static display duty 2 years in a row with a jet at the show, I will say that San Diego and socal at large is absolutely hands down, the most pro-military place I have lived in my career, to include TX, the deep south, FL, VA, and NV. Of course there are some folks such as these who feel differently, but it was always surprising to meet the various hipsters, beach bums, and all other unexpected walks of life who were super supportive and in some way personally invested. Not saying that is wrong or right, just what it was. TX on the other hand, much to my surprise, was by far the least supportive (in my personal experience at least).
 
I mean... They're not entirely wrong.

The air show is a celebration of the men and machines whose job is to go out and kill or threaten to kill anyone that screws with America.

... but that's the point of the friggin' military.

The State Department is the branch responsible for the peace love and happiness part of international relations... and you don't see them having desk shows, because they are neither exciting nor necessarily effective, at least when it comes to interactions with belligerent nations.
 
ircphoenix said:
I mean... They're not entirely wrong.



The State Department is the branch responsible for the peace love and happiness part of international relations... and you don't see them having desk shows, because they are neither exciting nor necessarily effective, at least when it comes to interactions with belligerent nations.
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Desk shows ! This needs to become a thing......or is it already a thing?
 
Shepherd said:
The State Department could do something like this. In fact it should be MANDATORY that every person who works for the State Department perform in at least 4 parades a year.
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Fantastic idea. I will set up a tomato booth so the spectators can "discard" tomatoes at their favorite candidate. $20 for five nice overripe squishy beat up tomatoes would sell like hotcakes.
 
When I go to an airshow and see the old warbirds or the new ones, I really don't think too much about their deadly skills. I understand that is or was their prime purpose at one time but that is not what attracts me. I just love airplanes. The only time that it enters my mind in any sort of major way is when they do the simulated bombing runs and then the ground crew sets off the pyrotechnics. I could do without that nonsense.

As a peacetime veteran, I will however not judge the thoughts or opinions of wartime vets (especially ones who have suffered the consequences) on issues such as this. I might disagree with them but I respect that their experiences have led them to form different views than my own. I do not believe however that their protest will have the desired result. There are just too many people, civilian and veteran, who enjoy the shows.
 
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I remember an airshow in the early 90s at Norfolk. The Blue Angels practiced by turning sideways and flying almost between the tenders. That put them about 300' above the water and almost directly over the boat. Some people claim they flew between the floating drydock, but I never saw it. Still, best seat in the house...

During the show I was on watch topside and had an F-117 (then just starting to make public appearances) sneak up on me. Never saw or heard it coming until it was 200' above me and 200' past me. If they had been strafing me, it would have worked brilliantly.
 
All politics and feelings about war aside, these guys picked the wrong place to protest. Miramar is one of 4 major military installations within a 30minute driving radius. I'm not sure you could target a higher military per capita area anywhere. They are unlikely to get much support here, or make any kind of a dent in attendance.
 
StinkBug said:
All politics and feelings about war aside, these guys picked the wrong place to protest. Miramar is one of 4 major military installations within a 30minute driving radius. I'm not sure you could target a higher military per capita area anywhere. They are unlikely to get much support here, or make any kind of a dent in attendance.
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Technically they picked the best place. If they protested inside some hippie commune somewhere, you'd have never heard about it at all, right?

They're not looking for "support", that's the entire point of a protest.

(Strictly a point about protest strategy. Not a judgement on whether or not the protest content is bad or good.)

There's a reason politicians want the protestors at political events a few blocks away in the nice little "free speech zone" if they can pull it off.

Wouldn't want them where they might bother anyone, or get in arguments in front of cameras, you know. Much cleaner that way. Can't have protestors blocking the view of any of the happy cultists now... That'd be annoying! ;)

They haven't even protested yet, and we're having a discussion about them on some aviation forum. Their PR strategy must be working.
 
Maybe they can get these clowns to help. They are pretty good at losing battles.


Whale-Wars-whale-wars-6399525-768-1024.jpg
 
denverpilot said:
They're not looking for "support", that's the entire point of a protest
...
Their PR strategy must be working.
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Nah. Their PR strategy sucks because too many don't know what they're protesting about. Or at least I don't. To me, they're just a bunch of riff-raff causing trouble. Whatever cause they're associated with is tainted by their association.

When the news about your protest overshadows your message then you've failed.
 
bflynn said:
Nah. Their PR strategy sucks because too many don't know what they're protesting about. Or at least I don't. To me, they're just a bunch of riff-raff causing trouble. Whatever cause they're associated with is tainted by their association.

When the news about your protest overshadows your message then you've failed.
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Ever see a protest group ever have a specific action they want taken to fix their butthurt? It's fairly rare.

Sometimes the group will say "Free So-and-So" or something like that, but usually not.

It's usually platitudes like "stop all wars" or "save the whales" without much deeper thought behind it other than to march around shouting slogans and sayings and pretend they're accomplishing something.

Thinking this group would be any different is kinda silly. It's exceedingly rare for a protest group to be able to answer any direct questions about what exactly they'd like done about anything.
 
There have been some wild arguments on FB with the circumcision protesters. Had a couple chick's tell me I was missing out on sensation since I had been circumcised. They called me a liar when I told them; "If I were any more sensitive my wife would be unhappy." LOL
 
The folks in that organization were obviously the people that worked in the chow hall or finance.
 
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