This is not a good look.
From the article:
Military families and Congress members are sounding the alarm about an intensifying mental health crisis onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, as its 5,000 sailors and marines endure a record-breaking deployment at sea tied to the war with Iran.
Two leading specialist military papers, the Navy Times and Stars and Stripes, are reporting that there have been multiple attempts by sailors to jump overboard as poor conditions and mental stresses on the Lincoln reach the breaking point. The crew is in its ninth month at sea, and has spent 250 days consecutively without making land – a record for an aircraft carrier in modern times.
…
The current crunch has been months in the making. The warship left San Diego on 21 November and was originally intended for the Pacific but was redirected to the Middle East once the US-Israel war with Iran began.
Since then, MS Now revealed, the 5,000-plus crew has had only two days on land, in Guam in December and Oman in July. The deployment was scheduled to end in May but has been extended a couple of times amid the ongoing war.
In April, there was a flurry of public criticism about dire conditions onboard the carrier. Photos emerged of poor-quality and rationed food, and there were reports of water shortages, moldy showers and broken laundry machines.
Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, dismissed the accounts as “more fake news”.
Levin responded to Hegseth’s remark this week. He said: “These men and women signed up to serve their country. The least their country owes them is hot water, a working toilet and a real meal. Hegseth cannot even manage that, and he has the nerve to look their families in the eye and call them liars.”
The Guardian contacted the US navy for its response to reports of attempts to jump overboard. After this article was published, a navy official responded, saying that they were aware that “extended deployments place a significant strain on our service members and their families, and we are grateful for the resilience and sacrifices they make”.
If you read closely, the Navy “official” did not deny the reports. Additionally, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s responses to earlier reports of problems on the Lincoln were actually backhanded swipes at the sailors and service people on the ship.
Honestly, Hegseth is not fit to run a paintball game, let alone the U.S. military
Veteran journalist Noah Schackman chimes in:
This should be bigger news. First and foremost, the people serving on the USS Abraham Lincoln need to be provided with the resources they require to stay healthy - physically and mentally - especially in a time of war. If ever there was a time for oversight by members of Congress, this is it. Given that we shouldn’t expect anything from the cowed and complicit Republican majority, the Democratic minority should hold shadow hearings STAT.
Combined with the news that we are running out of critical munitions AND squandering billions of dollars pursuing Trump’s Folly in the Middle East, the reports regarding the Abraham Lincoln highlight the sheer incompetence of the Trump Administration, specifically Trump, Hegseth and, frankly, the ranking civilian and sycophantic military brass installed by them after dubious house cleaning.
Here is national security expert and historian Phillips O’Brien commenting on the current state of affairs:
Remember, “policy is politics and politics is policy”. And this is about competence (or the lack thereof) and accountability. Given that Trump’s Folly looks likely to end in the most damaging U.S. military and geo-political defeat in our lifetimes (yes, that includes Vietnam), the degradation and squandering of our military “assets” - including the dedicated people who serve - is an issue that Trump, Hegseth and complicit Republicans need to answer for to the people they nominally serve - us.
And again, it’s the corruption stupid.
Not only are these idiots incompetent and waaayyy to full of themselves, but their corruption is making everything more expensive, including gas and food.
This is a winning issue and it’s also a necessary issue to point out to the generally uninformed voting public…
Steve Jablonsky - Battleship: The Art of War
