“Air Force 1, New York 0”
(a random pagemonkey rant)

DATELINE NEW YORK
Two aircraft that elicit emotional responses in virtually everyone who sees them were part of the New York skyline today for roughly 20 minutes.

One of them was a Boeing 747-200, one of the most capable and durable aircraft in the skies today - normally associated with overseas flights, an airframe design versatile enough to have been adapted to fly the Space Shuttle as piggyback cargo on a world-wide tour, and sturdy enough to have survived documented cases of exceeding Mach 1 in unplanned emergency dives which would literally rip less-durable aircraft into peices from stress.

The other was an F-16, known for agility and deadliness. Unless you’re on the ground working on one, or talking to its captain over encrypted command radio, being around an F-16 will undoubtedly lead to the worst and possibly last day you’ll ever have.

These “supermodels” - one in camo, the other in Air Force One attire - appeared together over New York for a photoshoot today.

My question is, why wasn’t this DoD-conceived, FAA-approved “photo op” conducted in such a way which would have been a cause to celebrate, in a way that could have put a lot of soothing salve on the raw nerves that even thinking of September 11, 2001 scrape, rather than one of those “don’t tell anyone” black-ops shenanigans that we’ve all come to hate and fear?

I know, and you know, the answer to that question - and we’ll explore it shortly, Gentle Reader, but for the moment I’m going to cry over spilt milk.

Propagandized correctly, planned with the right goals in mind, and carried out ‘just so,’ this flyby of the Statue of Liberty and low-level overflight of New York could have been accomplished safely and could have truly ushered in a new era of readiness instead of continuing the eight-year run of paranoia, pervasive gut-level fear and subconcious profiling of non-white persons who appear of Middle Eastern heritage. (photo credit: NYT / Jason McLane)

Instead, most New Yorkers, especially those who are as near-sighted as I am, saw a jumbo jet being pursued by a smaller aircraft - and in New York, out of place jetliners have meant trouble in the past, even as recently as the one which had to land in the Hudson due to birdstrike damage to its engines.

As the famous movie line goes, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

It proves just how far down the drain emergency communication abilities have gone since the technology-challenged days of the 1960s, when virtually every radio in this country had two Civil Defense “deltas” or marks that owners could tune to if they thought something was amiss. The system has been mothballed, but to its credit it did work correctly until judged an unnecessary expense several years ago.

But there still is an Emergency Communications protocol in place, and it could have been used to alert the citizens of New York that the presence of a VC-25 in Air Force One livery and the accompanying fighter aircraft were planned, and that everything was “A-Okay,” and perhaps…

…just perhaps… A few short words babbling along the lines that we have taken back the airspace over our own damn country.

An extravagant waste of a precious opportunity.

Louis Caldera, director of the White House Military Office, has stated that he approved the flyover, and that he takes full credit for the “confusion” - his words, not mine - that it created.

It would be easy to lay the blame squarely on him, because it would surely stick - but he is, in effect, merely a public-relations man. He doesn’t make decisions, he abides by them.

All the public servants in New Jersey and New York were aware of this mission, the police, the firemen (at least at the supervisory level), the folks who manage the 911 emergency call centers, the mayors and the dogcatchers, all aware - and said nothing.

Nothing, to the residents, nothing in the form of negative feedback to the DoD.

Secret is still okay, especially at the local level.

That, Gentle Reader, is the reason the general populace wasn’t told - this piss-poor imitation of Cold War Top Secret we’re living with today, installed by the previous regime.

Don’t even think about making some misguided claim that someone would have tried to shoot M/N 29000 down had they known in advance that it would be making a lazy pass at 1,000 feet over New York. You can bet your frickin’ house and your sweetheart’s fine ass that those in our midst who would have wanted to shoot that 747 down could have, because they pay more attention to things like the unsecured radio channels used to manage air traffic than you and I do. You can pick up ATC with a $100 scanner from RadioShack, and it doesn’t take more than a few moments to power up a LAW or rocket-propelled grenade and target something.

It should have gone much better, Gentle Reader, it should have been an event instead of something to revive old nightmares.

Had I been in charge of planning, I would have made an announcement about 15 minutes before the actual flyover, and I would have rolled out several different aircraft - perhaps a B-52, certainly a few cargo craft like C-17s, a handful of large helicopters, and maybe a decoy 747 or two. And then, a squadron of F-16s with AF-1 right in the middle.

That way, you’d have lots of happy crowds waving, lots of home video, lots of good will.

As it stands, lots of folks probably shit themselves and even more will awake with nightmares and suffer the shakes and have cold sweats in quiet moments.

Do me - and yourself - a huge favor. Talk to your local representatives, and tell them they will lose your vote should anything even passingly similar to this happen in your locale.

It will go up the chain, you can be sure. And the more our representatives understand that we’re not going to sit still for this kind of mis-management, the more likely they will be to follow Obama’s top-down policy of transparency in government.

~ pagemonkey