I went to Virginia Beach a couple weeks ago to escape the forecasted heavy snow and ice and power outages in central Virginia. It was only going to rain in Virginia Beach. I arrived late on a Saturday. Sunday it did indeed only rain, albeit there were 50 mph winds.
Then something strange happened on Monday. It was my first time at Virginia Beach. A pair of fighter jets screeched overhead. Well, okay, I’ve heard those elsewhere before. And I knew of course that the Hampton Roads area has the largest naval complex in the world. The strange thing is that there was another pair of jets every few minutes for all of the daylight hours.
Should I find this noise on an otherwise quiet beach objectionable?
It seems like there are number of people in the State of Washington who would lodge strong objections. They recently objected to Navy SEALS using state park beaches for training. And it’s in the courts. A couple objectors:
The state agency caved, but not enough: “Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission in a 4-3 vote to agree to a scaled-back training that would limit where and what time SEALs could train, prompting the lawsuit to block the use of state parks entirely.”
Methinks these people in the State of Washington are not only detached from the U.S. armed forces but from reality. Like they never saw a war movie they liked. Like they never read any of the books on combat like those five recommended by Ray E. Boomhower a couple weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal.
Yes, it would certainly be surprising to be sunning or playing at a beach and see armed men, or women, arising out of the waters. Even if they were wearing American uniforms. The U.S. Navy could assuage their concerns, I suppose, by posting notices at the entrances to the parks, on the relevant days, “U.S. Armed Forces may appear suddenly on beach. Do Not Be Alarmed.” Think this would do? I think that, rather than frightening some people, there might be a lot of young men and women who would be attracted to such a beach in the hope of meeting patriotic members of their generation.
You may have read of a Navy SEAL dying and another hospitalized during “Hell Week” while performing underwater demolition training in San Diego. There are pictures associated with the reports of the tragedy showing the SEALs training in front of the luxurious Hotel del Coronado.
If hotel guests and beachwarmers have made objections to training at the Coronado, I haven’t found any online. But I found the opposite: A short videoclip of a young mother happy and proud to show her young children the SEALs training on this beach.
My father, Ivan D. Thunder (1913-2010), trained with the 133rd Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) off the beach of Mississippi. Here’s a description of these Seabees:
Formed at Camp Peary and further trained at Endicott and Gulfport the 133rd NCB left Hueneme May 1, 1944 for Pearl Harbor, and Nov. 1, 1944 joined the Fifth Marine Amphibious Corps and the Fourth Marine Division for an amphibious assault. The entire outfit landed on Iwo Jima on D-Day with the first assault waves of the Fourth Marine Division. The 133rd suffered severe casualties during the bitter fighting for Iwo where it distinguished itself in both front line combat and construction. In September the unit was alerted for a move from Iwo Jima to the occupation of Japan.
Do you think local civilians in Mississippi complained about their training? My father came home for Christmas, 1945, and saw his 15-month old daughter for the first time. I was pleased to accompany him to a reunion of his battalion in 2003 in Biloxi, Mississippi. I heard him addressed as “Lieutenant” for the first time. I commend to you his posthumous The Pacific War and Battle of Iwo Jima: Recollections & Essays by a Seabee Lieutenant (2012).
The United States of America is the safest space on earth. For we who wish to be free. It’s the reason so many come here from abroad, whether in compliance with our laws, or not in compliance with our laws.
“How much longer will our safe space last?” is not a question I thought I’d ever ask. But the Biden Administration and his Democratic Party have been betraying America for over a year now, every day, with every policy, every speech, every act, every omission. Biden certainly knew how to create “a safe space” for Putin’s Russia when he declared that the United States would not react to a “minor incursion” of Ukrainian sovereign territory. He certainly did not help create a “safe space” for the Ukrainians in their own country.
Biden was oblivious to creating a “safe space” for American civilians, American military personnel, and Afghan allies in Afghanistan. Or in numerous cities the summer of 2020. No, he betrayed us. I don’t ever want to hear about Biden or a Democrat trying to create a safe space, safe from Russians, Chinese, Iranians, gangs, street criminals, campus microaggressors. They have absolutely no credibility on the issue.
We need to have a strong defense, be perceived as having a strong defense, and be perceived as willing to use it to secure our lives and our liberties. I say: Let the fighter jets continue off Virginia Beach. Let the Navy SEALs train wherever they think best. The U.S. Navy said, about State of Washington state park beaches: “This area provides a unique environment of cold water, extreme tidal changes, multi-variant currents, low visibility, complex underwater terrain, climate and rigorous land terrain, which provides an advanced training environment.”
When we give our military space to train, they will create a safe space “from sea to shining sea” for us to live, in freedom.
