The Navy’s Blue Angels often perform a surprise low-flying passover from behind assembled crowds at air shows, like the one taking place at the Brunswick airport this weekend. It’s a thrilling – and startling – demonstration of power from their F-18 fighter jets. You may have even heard them practicing it over the area this week.

The move resembles maneuvers that similar warplanes employed in recent weeks above Kabul, Afghanistan, to warn would-be attackers in the last days of America’s longest war. There, innocent civilians bearing what few belongings they could carry braved the chaos and growing violence in a desperate attempt to flee their homeland. They endure new dangers, in part of America’s making, and exacerbated by the rise of terrorist organizations like ISIS-K. That group claimed responsibility for the bombing at the Kabul airport last week that killed 11 Marines, a soldier and a Navy corpsman – the final U.S. casualties in this conflict.

Since the completion of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, President Biden has spoken of a new era in American foreign policy, one he says will lead with diplomacy – a tacit admission that, for too long, the military has held outsized influence on the way America operates abroad.

Enjoy the air show this weekend. It’s sure to be a great deal of fun. But when you gasp in awe at these demonstrations of military might, think also about how you would like for America to appear before the rest of the world.

Paul Shinkman
Brunswick