Letter: The real F-35 noise is all the untruths

I’m sitting on my deck on the creek, not more than three crow-flying miles from Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort. It was here before I came. It will be here when I have gone to the old aviator’s hangar in the sky. The United States Marine Corps pilots, and perhaps some British Royal Air Force pilots, are out plying their trade in the traffic pattern with their shiny new F-35s. They are noisy. My birds have left the yard. The ice cubes in my evening beverage vibrate, untouched by human hands. My dog looks at me as if to say, are things OK?

What I do not care to hear from some patriotic Hilton Head Island or Bluffton carpetbagger is anything about the sound of freedom. The only sound of freedom being heard down yonder in south of the Broadland is their complaint about any of their local tax money being spent on north of the Broadland folks.

I sat in the pointy end of noise-making flying machines, both military and civilian, for 30 years. I paid my patriotic dues and would gladly volunteer to do it again. I consider what these pilots are doing to be freedom-ensuring acts.

But I don’t hear the sound of freedom from the F-35 engine now. All I hear is the noise of a lying politician, the noise of a less than truthful Defense Department representative telling the citizens of our lovely place on earth how the noise will be no problem.

This story was originally published May 25, 2016 at 12:03 PM with the headline "Letter: The real F-35 noise is all the untruths."