Our view: However you vote, airport authority wasted time and money in circling back to obvious, impossible solution

When county voters consider Proposition A on the Nov. 7 ballot, they should forget everything they learned in civics class about how every vote counts.

Because either way the public comes down on the San Diego Regional Airport Authority's measure to build a new international airport at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, it's just not going to matter.

First, the vote is advisory and nonbinding -- meaning it holds no weight other than as a symbolic gesture that San Diegans want their planes to take off from Miramar. Second, our leaders lack the political will to actually move forward with building a civilian airport on military land. Third, the Marines are soundly against the idea, and the Pentagon is likely to put up a fight. And fourth, at the behest of Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon, Congress specifically banned civilian air travel over the region's military installations in the latest defense appropriations bill to block such an airport.

In other words, the airport authority's three-year-long search for a new airport site has been a massive waste of time and resources, and we're still without a real solution to our air travel needs.

The classic definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing while expecting a different result -- and that's why we find ourselves yet again strapped into the airport-site search straitjacket.

The search for a new airport site has been ongoing for the better part of half a century. Nearly 30 different studies have been undertaken. And the county's residents already voted to stick the airport at Miramar back in 1994. Here we go again.

Would that we could go back to the mid-1990s, when San Diego city leaders spurned the Navy's interest in selling Miramar before the base was transferred to the Marines, or just after the Korean War, when earlier San Diego leaders turned down an offer to buy Miramar for one lousy dollar. But we can't.

At the rate we're going, San Diegans may need to get used to the idea of flying out of Orange County or Los Angeles and waiting in long lines at Lindbergh Field.

According to the airport authority, Lindbergh won't be able to serve the region's travel needs by 2015. The group wants to build a new airport, with two runways, which they say will not fit on the strip of land we use now along San Diego Harbor.

We're not entirely convinced Lindbergh is doomed. With other airports nearby to the north, Lindbergh may be able to sustain San Diego's thirst for flight. Perhaps Carlsbad's McClellan-Palomar Airport will pick up more business. And who's to say technological improvements won't extend Lindbergh's life span?

But if there is a need, the most likely spot to build a new airport is Miramar. It's centrally located, is accessible by freeways and trains and is equipped with a jet-fuel pipeline. Of course, the Marines stationed there say they can't train with civilian airplanes sharing their space.

At least the airport authority didn't put up for a vote U.S. Rep. Bob Filner's zany idea to build a massive airport -- and a multibillion-dollar magnetic train to get there -- in his Imperial Valley, another part of the San Diego Democrat's district.

It's disgusting that we're at this point again. The Legislature created the airport authority in 2003 to supposedly solve this problem. Now local state Sen. Christine Kehoe and Assemblyman George Plescia are holding hearings to see how it has worked. Well, it hasn't.

So it comes down to what symbolic message San Diego County voters want to send to regional planners and military brass Nov. 7. The national security argument is a tough one to beat, especially considering the current state of world affairs and the sway the Pentagon has on our elected representatives. We'd rather stand symbolically with our Marines and vote against Prop. A than travel once again down a road paved with wasted time and effort.

But like we said, it really doesn't matter.