By James J. Devine
If loose lips sink ships, a president with a few loose screws can probably flounder the entire fleet. And what are we to make of the men and women in Washington who watch this happening—who see a moron with no naval expertise, no engineering background, and no discernible interest in national security beyond its aesthetic appeal—and do absolutely nothing?
Let us name this for what it is: a disgrace.
And let us be absolutely clear about the context in which this madness is unfolding.
The United States Navy is already in crisis. It is not a hypothetical crisis. It is not a future crisis. It is happening right now, in real time, while the president obsesses over whether aircraft carriers look sufficiently nostalgic.
Consider the evidence:
The USS Abraham Lincoln has been at sea for more than 200 days. Two hundred days without a port call. Two hundred days without proper rest for its crew. Two hundred days during which sailors have attempted suicide—actually attempted to jump overboard—because the conditions have become unbearable. The Military Times reported that at least two sailors have tried to end their lives. The wife of one sailor said burnout caused her husband to try to jump.
And what is the response from the president? He told reporters that the Lincoln’s deployment had been “not nearly long enough.”
Not nearly long enough.
Let that sink in. Men and women are literally trying to kill themselves to escape the conditions aboard his Navy’s ships, and the commander-in-chief says they haven’t been out there long enough.
The Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, called the reports “completely misrepresented.” The head of Central Command, Adm. Brad Cooper, visited the ship and described it as “awe inspiring” before acknowledging—almost as an afterthought—that mental health is “another aspect of individual health” that requires attention. He then wrote an opinion piece claiming that many of the concerns were “old news.”
Old news to whom? Certainly not to the families of the sailors who are suffering. Certainly not to the sailors themselves, who are trapped on a floating nightmare with food shortages, water contamination, sewage problems, and deteriorating morale. But it’s “old news” to the admiral, so perhaps we should all just move along.
Meanwhile, the USS Benfold—a guided-missile destroyer—lost all power in the South China Sea for four days. Four days without drinkable water. Four days without meals. Four days without running toilets. Four days without air conditioning in the South China Sea, where temperatures and humidity make such conditions not merely uncomfortable but dangerously unhealthy.
The crew had to be towed to port in the Philippines. They had to be fed by other ships. They demonstrated “resilience, grit, professionalism and unwavering steadiness,” according to a Navy spokesman, which is military-speak for “they didn’t mutiny, which is frankly more than anyone had a right to expect.”
And this is happening because the Trump administration has leaned so heavily on the Navy—deploying dozens of ships to blockade Venezuela, to conduct strikes against drug traffickers in Latin America, to wage war against Iran—that the fleet is literally falling apart. Maintenance is deferred. Deployments are extended. Ships are breaking down. Sailors are breaking down.
And what is the president doing about this crisis?
He is demanding that the Navy redesign its newest aircraft carriers to better match his aesthetic preferences. He wants the island—the multi-story command center—moved forward, toward the middle of the ship, because he thinks it will make them look more like World War II vessels.
He wants to replace the advanced electromagnetic catapult system with steam-powered technology that is older, less reliable, and less effective.
I imagine he’s going to come out with more wisdom, like bringing back bellbottoms and giving ship captains a parrot.
Billions of dollars. Years of delays. For the look of the thing.
This is not governance. This is not leadership. This is the tantrum of an old man who cannot accept that the world has changed since 1945, and who has surrounded himself with apparatchiks too terrified to say the word “no.”
The truly unforgivable sin, however, belongs not to the president—we have long since abandoned any pretense that he operates within the bounds of reason or reality—but to the sycophantic, spineless collection of so-called public servants who enable him.
Where are the admirals with the courage to resign in protest? Where are the Pentagon officials willing to speak truth to power, even at the cost of their careers? Where are the members of Congress—especially those who claim to understand national security—who will stand on the floor and declare, with all necessary force, that this is pure, unadulterated idiocy?
The Navy’s own officials, speaking anonymously because they are terrified of retribution, have already told reporters that moving the “island” would cost billions and severely delay the program. They have explained that the current design improves safety and efficiency. They have laid out the technical arguments in meticulous detail.
And yet, they continue to “evaluate.” They continue to “study.” They continue to pretend that this is a legitimate policy question rather than what it manifestly is: the whimsical fancy of a man who treats the most powerful military in human history as his personal decorating project.
Let us pause to consider the obscenity of this juxtaposition.
While sailors aboard the Lincoln are trying to kill themselves, the president is worried about the silhouette of a ship that won’t be built for decades.
While the Benfold’s crew was sitting in the dark, without water or functioning toilets, the president was presumably looking at photographs of World War II carriers and thinking about how nice it would be if the new ones looked more like that.
It’s lucky that the Iranians were unaware because they are at war and they are taking it seriously.
While the Navy’s maintenance backlog grows and its ships break down and its sailors suffer, the president is demanding that the service spend billions of dollars to satisfy his ego.
This is decadence. This is the kind of rot that brings empires down. This is not how you build a fleet; this is how you squander one.
He’s also believed to be sinking the US dollar, with cryptocurrency ventures and a federal deficit of more than $2 trillion.
What does it say about American institutions that this is even being entertained? What does it say about the checks and balances that are supposed to guard against exactly this kind of capricious, uninformed decision-making? The founders created a system of separated powers precisely to prevent a single individual from steering the ship of state into the rocks based on nothing more than his personal aesthetic preferences. And where are those safeguards now? Cowering. Appeasing. Waiting for the mood to pass.
The excuses are pathetic. “We’re taking it seriously because of the delays and cost overruns it could create.” As if that is an argument for proceeding! As if the correct response to a catastrophic idea is to study it carefully before perhaps, maybe, hopefully shelving it.
Adm. Cooper says mental health is a “leadership priority.” Leadership priority. What does that even mean when the ships are being deployed for 200-plus days without relief? What does that mean when the president says that’s “not nearly long enough”? What does that mean when the Secretary of Defense dismisses legitimate concerns as “completely misrepresented”?
Leadership priority. The phrase is almost too absurd to parse. It is the language of an institution that has given up on actually solving problems and has settled for performing concern while the actual crisis deepens.
Meanwhile, the Navy’s own data shows that the Lincoln has “among the lowest number of cases related to mental health” of any carrier in the fleet. That is not a reassuring statistic. That is a horrifying one. It either means that the Navy is systematically underreporting mental health issues—or that the condition of the rest of the fleet is so dire that the Lincoln looks good by comparison. Either way, it is not the flex that the admiral seems to think it is.
And what about the families?
What about the wives and husbands and children who are watching their loved ones suffer, who are getting phone calls that are “limited when the operational threat is too high,” who are being told by the president that their deployed family members haven’t been gone long enough?
What about the mother of the sailor who tried to jump overboard? What does she think about the admiral calling her son’s suffering “old news”? What does she think about the Secretary of Defense dismissing her concerns? What does she think about the president saying the deployment was “not nearly long enough”?
She thinks—and she is right—that no one in Washington gives a damn about her son. That he is expendable. That his mental health is a “leadership priority” in the sense that it is discussed in meetings and then promptly forgotten when the next operational requirement comes down from the White House.
And what about the crew of the Benfold? They were without power for four days. Four days without water, without food, without functioning toilets, without air conditioning. And when it was over, the Navy didn’t even tell anyone. The incident was reported by USNI News, not by the Navy itself. They would have kept it quiet if they could. They would have pretended it didn’t happen. They would have continued to project strength and competence while their ships literally broke down.
This is the state of American leadership. This is the state of American governance. A president who is more concerned with the “look” of things than with the lives of the men and women who serve, and a governing class that has wholly abdicated its constitutional responsibility to check him.
Let us be clear about what is happening here. The president has, by many accounts, also demanded that carriers revert to steam-powered catapults—a technology that the Navy itself has called less effective and less reliable than the electromagnetic system currently in use. He has unveiled a plan for a new class of battleships, named after himself, that naval analysts have called unnecessary and wasteful. He is systematically degrading the capabilities of the United States Navy to satisfy his fragile ego.
And no one stops him.
Not the Secretary of Defense, who dismisses legitimate concerns about sailors’ welfare as “completely misrepresented.” Not the Republican majorities in Congress, who have traded their oaths of office for the privilege of staying in power. Not the career officials who know better but are too afraid to be fired. Not the admirals who swear allegiance to the Constitution but cannot muster the courage to tell a civilian that his orders are dangerous and wrong.
This is not loyalty. Loyalty does not require you to break the nation’s weapons. Loyalty does not require you to risk lives because a president likes a certain silhouette. The truly patriotic act—the act that would demonstrate genuine love of country—would be to stand up, say “No, Mr. President, that is stupid and destructive,” and accept the consequences.
But we know they will not. They will continue to “study” and “evaluate” and “consider.” They will spend billions of dollars on redesigns that no one wants, that no one needs, that no competent naval officer would ever propose. They will watch as the fleet degrades and the readiness collapses and the sailors suffer. And they will do so because they lack the spine to tell one man that he is wrong.
History will not be kind to these people. Future generations will look back and ask: Where were the adults in the room? Where were the patriots? And the answer will be: They were cowering. They were waiting. They were “evaluating.” They were calling “old news” the suffering of sailors who tried to kill themselves rather than spend another day on a ship that the president was treating like his personal toy.
The Navy’s current carriers, the Ford-class ships, represent the pinnacle of American engineering and military capability. They are the product of decades of accumulated knowledge and hard-won lessons. They are designed to keep the crews safe, the aircraft flying, and the enemies at bay. They are not, and should not be, subject to the whims of a president who cannot tell the difference between a functional warship and a nostalgic photograph.
And yet, here we are. Contemplating billions in waste. Contemplating decades of delay. Contemplating the deliberate degradation of the most powerful naval force in history—all because no one in Washington has the guts to say, “Sir, you are making a terrible mistake, and we will not let you do this.”
Shame on them. Shame on every admiral, every official, every senator, every representative, every appointee who knows better and does nothing. You are not protecting the country by complying. You are protecting yourselves. You are protecting your jobs. You are protecting your access to power.
And in doing so, you are betraying every sailor who will serve on these ships, every pilot who will launch from these decks, every American who relies on the Navy to protect them. You are betraying the Constitution you swore to defend. You are betraying the legacy of every sailor who fought and died in those World War II ships that the president finds so aesthetically pleasing.
Let us be absolutely clear about the moral calculus here.
The president has a preference for how ships look. The Navy has an obligation to keep its sailors alive and its fleet operational. These two things are now in direct conflict, and the people who are supposed to be protecting the latter are instead accommodating the former.
A sailor on the Lincoln tried to jump overboard because conditions were unbearable. A sailor on the Benfold sat in the dark without water for four days. The Navy’s fleet is being stretched to the breaking point by wars that have no clear endpoint and no clear strategy. And the president’s response is to demand that the Navy redesign its ships to look more like they did in 1945.
This is not merely irresponsible. This is criminal. This is willful negligence of the most fundamental duties of the commander-in-chief. The president is charged with providing for the common defense. He is charged with ensuring the welfare of the men and women who serve. He is failing on both counts, and the people around him are enabling that failure.
If you are reading this and you work in the Pentagon or on Capitol Hill—if you are one of the people who knows that this is wrong but you’re just waiting it out—know this: History will remember you. Not kindly. Not as the prudent bureaucrats who managed the crisis. You will be remembered as the enablers. The cowards. The people who knew the ship was headed for the rocks and didn’t say a word.
The Navy may or may not actually move the island. The catapults may or may not actually be replaced. But the damage is already done. The message has been sent: The United States of America, the most powerful military force in the history of the planet, is now subject to the aesthetic preferences of a delusional man who thinks “World War II” is a design philosophy rather than a cataclysmic global conflict that killed 75 million people.
This is decadence. This is the kind of rot that brings empires down. This is not how you build a fleet; this is how you squander one.
Stand up. Resist. Say no.
Or be remembered as the reason it all fell apart.
Discover more from NJTODAY.NET
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.