What do active-duty military think of Trump these days? There was a time when I had family members who were career army, but they’re no longer serving. so I have no idea.
The treatment of the service people on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln and other ships stationed in the Arabian Sea is just plain callous. I do not believe any previous presidents ever brushed off concern for the well-being of troops as coldly as Trump did.
Trump was asked by reporters Friday whether the USS Lincoln’s deployment had gone on too long.
“No, not nearly long enough,” Trump said.
Today he’s calling reports about conditions on the Lincoln “fake news.”
It’s not clear to me if the situation — which I’m reading is affecting other ships — is being properly addressed. The U.S.S. George Washington is said to be on its way to the Arabian Sea to relieve the Lincoln, but there are problems on other ships as well. And it’s obvious nothing would have been done had families not gone to the media and made a stink about it.
Do read or listen to Paul Krugman’s column or podcast — it’s a podcast with a transcript — The Misery Will Continue Until Morale Improves. It begins —
According to an old military maxim, amateurs talk about strategy, professionals talk about logistics. But these days we need a third category: Immature, insecure guys think that war is about acting tough and looking cool.
I have no military experience, but I’ve read enough history to know that lots of battles, and wars, were lost because of failures in logistics.
Krugman goes on to say that “Trump and company are eviscerating the military.” We’ve burned through weapons and equipment for no good reason, and we’re subjecting the seamen to horrific conditions — inadequate food, flooding toilets, no time off for months.
And then we have the stories about Trump intervening. Demanding, first, that the Navy construct a whole new class of ships, Trump-class battleships, which are useless and would be sitting ducks. Then demanding that the Navy replace modern catapults with steam catapults, which he thinks are cooler. And then demanding that they relocate the command tower on aircraft carriers because he wants them to look more like the way they looked during World War II.
Yes, those are Trump’s priorities regarding the military. Basically he’s an eight-year-old boy in an 80 year old body who has seen a lot of World War II movies, I guess.
Krugman goes on to say that Trump is not in charge of his faculties. I’m not sure he ever had that many faculties. With him it’s hard to tell what might be dementia and what might be plain old stupid. But he keeps creating his own crises with bad decisions and then doesn’t know how to address them. If he ever had to deal with a real threat, some Cuban-Missile-Crisis level event, we’re doomed..
"horrific conditions — inadequate food, flooding toilets, no time off for months."
Sounds a lot like my year in Vietnam 67-68. HQ Co 25th Inf Div mess hall was reputed to be the worst in the division with baby roaches in the noodles [I lost 57 lbs], outhouses, and 12-14 hours nighttime shifts 7 days a week, and then maybe 3 hours' sleep before it got too hot and humid.
But at least I didn't have to spend it cooped up in a metal box.
I was on the carrier Enterprise in '75 in the South China Sea when Saigon fell. It was the end of a nine-month WestPac. We'd been at sea seven months of the nine, which meant we'd stopped at Pearl in Hawaii, Singapore, Subic Bay PI, Mombasa, Kenya, Hong Kong… That's normal for a carrier – lots of sea time, lots of flying, underway replenishment, which means ship-to-ship transfer of jet fuel and supplies. Navy stuff.
We were not the only carrier in the Pacific. Other carriers took turns with us at 'Yankee Station". This is the key point. SOP is that you take turns during a conflict. It is part of planning until now. Troops are sent in harms way and the Pentagon makes it up as they go along after that.
There's no universal opinion that 'all' soldiers and sailors share. I can only be sure of mine. I'd have died at my station on the Enterprise in a crisis because if you cut and run in a battle, you create special risks for others. Do your job, and everyone stands a better chance of surviving. But if you aren't at GQ, there's nothing to keep you from having your own opinion. Here's mine.
Going week after week in circles and figure eights because the brass in DC have their collective heads in a place the where sun don't shine, sucks. We were waiting in the Gulf of Tonkin for weeks to do the final evacuation. When the order did come down, it was a cluster-flock. That's not how we were trained, and when it's a screw up at the top, it doesn't feel any better. It feels worse.
Bad food when at sea drives down morale. Bad leadership is ten times worse The sailors on the Lincoln did their jobs and were punished for their professionalism. The ship could have ported for maintenance which they needed if the brass had done any planning, but everyone was reacting to Trump's mercurial moods and threats. I do not care what job you have in the USN, but the manual does not tell you to "make it up as you go along." That's Trump's MO and everybody from Hesgeth down was doing exactly that.
I can't speak to how anybody on the Lincoln feels. I know how I would feel. I'd want to get home and start job hunting for anything I could start the day after I got out of Trump's lousy canoe club. There are 20K empty billets in the Navy – I suspect that number will go way up before 2028
It's Worse than "Amateur Hour" at the Pentagon
The military always tried to think and act superior to civilians. It is a warrior class sort of thing. Sure, they did not have to/ get to do things civilians to do, like decide what they are going to wear, do laundry, buy and cook food and the like. The military takes care of all of that. Except when it doesn't.
The military of this country depends upon civilian leadership. This is the theory at least. Never before has the military had to answer to civilian leaders that lacked basic skills of civility like we have today. This could be the problem.
Is the lack of civility trickling down from the top?
Bernie – soldiers are not too dumb to figure out what to wear or what to eat. The military code word is 'prepared.' There is no arrogant superiority. In combat, you have the 'room for error' of a few seconds. Groups of people have to function extremely well every time even with some people exiting and new people entering the team all the time. You practice – you evaluate the effectiveness, and you try to remedy decay in performance.
The military does not 'depend' on civilians for leadership. The US military is fairly unique in history for submitting voluntarily to civilian authority. This is part of their code. We're betting that code will hold, though the single factor running through the replacement and retirement of senior members of the military is a sincere commitment to that code. We will find out when the Pentagon orders the military to use force against US civilians on US soil.
It's not about the Orange Vulgarian infecting the civility of the military. The profession of killing other people has never been civil. It's the conditions under which you can do or are forbidden from killing. They are not allowed to conquor us.
Not necessarily too dumb to they just are not allowed to. They (get to) rely on or (must) rely on the military for certain basic needs depending on their personal point of view.
The career military constantly belittled civilians in my experiences. Even in the Army Hollywood (civilian style) showers were discouraged as were many other civilian ways. The military way was always the superior, right, and only way to do things. That message was delivered with constant repetition.
The problems carrier troops are having is that the leadership is not taking care of its troop's basic needs. My current status is civilian and lots of civilians also are having problems there too, not able to take care of their basic needs. Different situation but in the same boat (or ship as you Navy guys like to call it). Same leadership having the same problem.
Civilians have more ways and are generally responsible for meeting their basic needs. They too are having problems. They also see a government that does not seem to care. A government that lacks civility.
Tripple-Yes to the importance of Logistics to military success, especially in Naval operations. Vikings raiders sidestepped that problem by pillaging (which doubled as "shore leave"), but that doesn't work for a modern Navy. Great new post from Sal Mercogliano expands on all this:
The U.S. Navy Has a Logistics Problem (And It’s Getting Worse)
My guess is that Navy brass expected this damn war would be a short one, and believed that they had sufficient resources in place for that. Trump's original plan – as dictated by Bibi – was to decapitate Iran's government and install a new one, all in a matter of weeks. Navy brass would have had to agree that, Yes, they could do that.
Of course, that plan failed, and backfired spectacularly. The Navy's mission changed from attacks on Teheran to competing blockades of the Strait of Hormuz – an open-ended mission, though Trump continues to pretend that we will "win" any day now. The USN must have warned Hegseth & Trump that the logistics would become a problem; those warnings were ignored (surprise!).
Even worse, the USN depended on bases *in* the Persian Gulf (Bahrain, UAE, etc) as key logistical nodes. With the Strait effectively closed, our next nearest supply hubs are thousands of miles away. Diego Garcia is the closest, but it has limited infrastructure (storage). Most of the supply to our forces in the Arabian Sea seem to flow through Singapore.
The lack of other supply options highlights a long-term collapse of US diplomacy AND strategic planning. To be fair, the Indian Ocean is as far as you can get from the USA (at age 9, I abandoned my attempt to dig a hole through the center of the Earth when I realized that's where I'd come out). Pundits and politicians have been blithering about "the Indo-Pac" for a couple decades now, but we don't have any bases in India?
And there's another important factor which the Lincoln mess has brought to light: morale. If the original plan had succeeded, that wouldn't have been a problem, but as this drags on, it just gets worse. US troops in WWII endured some real hell, but few questioned why we were fighting – essentially, they attacked us first. In this case, we undeniably attacked them first, and worse, we did it for Israel, not for any real US national/strategic interest. Even worser, we remain at war largely because of Trump's fragile, inflated ego.
My heart goes out to the crew of the USS George Washington, on the way to relieve the Lincoln, wondering how long they'll be there, what they'll be doing, and why.
"Trump was asked by reporters Friday whether the USS Lincoln’s deployment had gone on too long.
“No, not nearly long enough,” Trump said"
It was a follow-up question about the U.S.S. Lincoln, and he STILL didn't understand the meaning of the word "deployment".
He responded as if the question was about the length of the war.
Blast it, I think you are correct. I totally missed it but in context it completely explains his remark.
Given that he has never mastered the concept of a tariff I suppose expecting him to learn a new word in just days or hours is a bit much to expect.
Thanks.
It's hard not to think of Eisenstein's movie, "Battleship Potemkin". It's a 1925 silent, and available on Youtube and probably elsewhere. The sailors are ill used. The meat is full of maggots. Then, the ship is called in to stop the revolution in Odessa. It's Soviet agitprop, but it's a good movie.
Going off topic, I read this at Salon in an article on Iran's strategy:
As reported by the International Business Times, Majid Shakeri, a senior adviser linked to Iran’s parliament, has urged the nation’s leaders to avoid both open war and a definitive agreement with Trump. The best strategy, he argues, is simply to wait until the end of Trump’s term, writing on X, “The path to victory in this war is neither just fighting nor just reaching an understanding. The path to victory is ‘managing the process of neither war nor peace, up to the point of victory.’”
This appears consistent with what they are doing, or not doing, particularly denying that any direct or backchannel talks with the US are happening when Trump tries to float a rumor that peace is around the corner.
If true, they are betting that a Democrat in the WH will pull the navy out and begin an investigation into Trump's war rather than pursue it. That seems likely – the public is tired of the war now. There's not going to be a huge backlash against not throwing billions away on a war with no path to victory. If Iran has the deep pockets for that strategy, the GOP in Congress has to decide on backing Trump's commitment with cash appropriations, or pulling the plug on this adventure, disavowing the decision. That would cause a deep fissure in the GOP, pro-Trump v anti-war.
The smart option is for Trump to pull out the Navy and declare he's willing to talk to Iran when the US is effectively surrendering. That would give Iran the green light to make an all-out assault on US bases in the region, or on the countries hosting them. (Probably the second.) I think Iran has kept their powder dry, not attacking US bases, in the hope the carrier group will depart. Once they are gone, they won't return.
In the Revolutionary War, the US did not 'beat' England. We refused to lose and demonstrated the will to keep on fighting, making the colonies expensive. Iran may be employing the same strategy, and not trying to drive up the US body count, which might shift our will to fight the war.
What's happening with sailors on that carrier, and the Iran war generally, are symptoms of a larger, and far more serious problem: Trump is running the government as a political operation, where his personal needs and whims take precedence over the needs and security of the American people. Its apparent in the way he's used tariffs, the unqualified people he insists on installing in important roles like the heads of DoD, DHS, DoT. Its apparent in the way he denies funds allocated by Congress for blue states, only because they are blue states. What makes matters even worse is the main feature of this administration is incompetence. After all these years Trump still doesn't understand the function of foreign policy, the military, law enforcement. He doesn't understand tariffs or the economy. He demonstrates a lack of understanding in government to effectively run it for the purpose its designed for, the protection, needs and security of the American people. His enablers in the GOP who do understand Trump's innate deficiencies will say, he has competent people around him to help him make decisions. But not only does he not have that, he only has people around him who will do what he says, regardless how ill informed or downright crazy it may be. You see it play out in the Iran war. You see it play out recently in the on again/off again tariffs against Canada. And he freely lies as he does to the American people about what's going on with things that directly effect them — the economy, the conditions on the carrier, because he doesn't see them as those he is there to serve, but that they exist to serve his whims and pleasures. He treats the public like he treats his staff at one of his golf clubs or mansions.
This imperial, autocratic disaster of a presidency can't end soon enough. That we have two years to go should be worrisome for anyone with half a brain. MAGA/GOP is starting to realize the extent things are effed up thanks to them. Ro Khanna gave a speech yesterday where he said there can be no reconciliation without accountability, that it can't be like after the Iraq war and 2008 financial crises, where not only were the worst actors allowed to just walk away, some got bailed out while homeowners were left holding the bag. I hope if dems take over in 2026 and 2028 they do that, if for no other reason than to let the world know that, instead of saying "we're better than this," we show them we are.
So many great articles, and Thomas Friedman nailed it on his The New Physics of power in the NYT.
The burden of vast legacy arms systems is just mostly that, a burden. It prompted a great comment from Andrew in Indiana:
This comment was amusing and obviously got the author Bruce B. from Arizona thinking. Plausible.
From Austria comes a well appreciated international take by Alex:
Opinion | The New Physics of Power – The New York Times