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Image by Carrie Borden.
The live broadcast of Saturday’s friendly between the US and German national soccer teams in Chicago was quite the eye-opener for international fans unfamiliar with the military’s typical role at US sporting events. Even this former American, who is all too familiar with the phenomenon of color guards and flyovers at football and baseball games, was taken aback on Saturday: those were not the standard sleek fighter jets flying in tight formation and trailing red-white-and-blue plumes that US spectators have come to expect, but lumbering B-52s, aka Stratofortresses, those infamous bringers of death and destruction to Indochina 60 years ago. In fact, two of the countries participating in this year’s World Cup have experienced B-52 “flyovers” of this latter sort far more recently: Iraq and Iran.
What on earth were the organizers of pre-game activities on Saturday thinking? Apparently, there is something of a tradition of B-52 flyovers at Soldier Field, but did they consider even for a moment what the world outside of US borders might think of this Dr. Strangelove moment?
I’m assuming there will be no military flyovers at US matches during the actual World Cup itself, but I could be wrong. The mind boggles just at the thought of a hypothetical match between Iran and the US in the knockout phase of the World Cup; add in a B-52 flyover and we have the ultimate post-modern World Cup version of the spontaneous British-German “troop friendlies” between the trenches in Flanders during the Christmas Truce of 1914.
If I were a sports journalist, I’d continue with musings on what will happen in the unlikely event that Iran survives the group phase. With their first two games in Los Angeles, they’ve set up their base in Tijuana, as they apparently do not have permission to spend the night on US soil. But what happens if they make it into the Round of 32?
And what of the undeclared US/Israeli war on Iran? Would a ceasefire hold for the duration of Iran’s participation in the World Cup? And if not, what then? We’re on unprecedented territory here…
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