They came back, again. Party on, dude. Rock and roll.

Don't the Blue Angels know there's a war on?

The Blue Angels--excuse me, the Key Bank Air Show at SeaFair--returned last weekend, and somewhere amongst the hundreds of thousands of awestruck spectators down on the ground, there were teenage boys who thought, "Gee, I'd really like to do that."

And who, this time next year, will be in Iraq as a result.

The Blue Angels are a love-em-or-hate-'em proposition. There's an undeniable lure to the very loud machines that fly in such stunning precision, and a breathless anticipation of the crash that never (usually) happens. On the other hand, they are very loud; ask any dog in the flight path. Some of us never quite got the appeal of loud machines, and view the Blue Angels as, essentially, a tractor pull with wings: lots of noise but no beauty.

They also curry disfavor among those of us who don't care for the mindless glorification of war. And right now, as it happens, there's a very unpopular war underway.

That war has been chronically short of machines and soldiers, and has been heavy on the air support to try to flush out Iraqi guerrillas. But not to worry: the Blue Angels are among the Navy's most successful recruiting tools. They don't, all by themselves, convince young men and women to sign up--at least, one would hope not--but they do contribute to a advertising-induced aura that being a soldier is really, really cool, and involves adventure, high tech, teamwork, going places fast, and making lots of noise. And, so, the Angels tour the country, every week somewhere else as a sort of military circus act.

But what does that circus act mean, at a moment when a majority of Seattleites in all probability believe that our military is, at best, being misused in the war on Iraq--and at a time when signing up for a tour of duty is as dangerous a proposition, involving as unknown a situation in the years to come, as our armed forces have seen in a generation? It hardly seems like a time for overriding sober signup decision-making with the adrenaline rush of a recruiting gimmick like the Blue Angels. Duty in Iraq these days is many things, but one thing it clearly is not is really, really cool. Ask any returning vet--of the few being allowed to return.

And what about the people in Iraq themselves? It's hard to separate out fast, high-tech military bombers from their mission--namely, to bomb, in a war where almost all of the casualties have been civilians and the rationales for target sselection are often murky. Indeed, one of the reasons civilian casualties have been so high is that guerrillas blend seamlessly into an urban population, and then the Americans overreact by bombing an entire area--creating that many more enemies.

Chances are the sound of a Blue Angel wouldn't be quite so thrilling to a resident of Baghdad or Fallujah. They're all too familiar with the payloads such machines carry. The fact that we in Seattle can separate awe over the technological accomplishment of the jets and the skill of the pilots from the purpose of the whole thing is a sort of peacetime privilege it's too easy to take for granted.

In essence, that's why I'm not a fan of the Blue Angels. I can appreciate the skill on display, and I trust that most of the audience knows the difference between an air exhibition show and a war. Still, it's hard to shake the notion that we're being sold a bill of goods--a vision of war as sleek and high-tech and, ultimately, painless and made to look easy. And if we know anything so far about our experience in Iraq, it's that it's not, by a long stretch, easy or lacking in pain ? for Iraqis or for Americans.

For a civic party, it's pretty sick.