Charles Pierce said it all about what Trump and his acting (of course) Navy Secretary did to the captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt.
The Roosevelt, you’ll recall is the aircraft carrier that suffered a coronavirus outbreak while on deployment. It is essentially impossible able to isolate infectious patients on naval vessel. US carriers are huge–the Roosevelt is 335 meters long (inevitably: more than three football fields), but it’s full of stuff, and there’s not actually that much space to put people, especially folks who need to be kept well away from everyone else.
Its captain, Brett Crozier, asked, then begged his superiors for permission to get the sick sailors off his ship, and to quarantine the carrier for the time necessary to ensure that the infection would not sweep through his whole crew, inevitably killing some of them.
Pierce quotes the letter Crozier wrote to command:
This will require a political solution but it is the right thing to do. We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset — our Sailors…Removing the majority of personnel from a deployed U.S. nuclear aircraft carrier and isolating them for two weeks may seem like an extraordinary measure…This is a necessary risk. Keeping over 4,000 young men and women on board the TR is an unnecessary risk and breaks faith with those Sailors entrusted to our care.
Nothing happened until Crozier’s letter leaked to The San Francisco Chronicle. (It’s not now and may never be known who leaked it; possibly Crozier himself.) Once that letter became public, two things followed. As Pierce writes,
Almost immediately, acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly acted like any acting secretary of anything in this administration* can be expected to act. He initially refused Crozier’s request and then, when the public heat came down, he allowed the afflicted member of the crew to be brought ashore. Then, on Thursday, he relieved Crozier of his command.
Modly’s explanation is a masterpiece of Trumpian malign weaselry:
Captain Crozier had allowed the complexity of his challenge with COVID breakout on the ship to overwhelm his ability to act professionally…(Pierce’s emphasis.)
There’s not much to add. Adam and others on this blob more closely connected to the military than me can chime in, but I’m quite sure that there is no way Crozier didn’t understand what would follow from his decision to protect his crew. A career on the fast track to flag rank is now dead.
Crozier is the kind of leader I would want if I or anyone I cared about had to go into harm’s way. His subordinates agree.
Donald Trump does not:
A Navy commander’s written alarms about a coronavirus outbreak aboard his aircraft carrier “looked terrible,” President Donald Trump said Saturday, as he praised military leaders who removed the USS Theodore Roosevelt’s top officer from his post.
A) I hope that military voters take note. And B): That Trump and his criminal, and criminally incompetent administration have made a ritual sacrifice of Captain Crozier is not just an act of petty and petulant vengeance. It measurably weakens US national defense.
We cannot rid ourselves of these malignancies a moment too soon.
Image: J. W. M. Turner, The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1838.
debbie
You can rest assured they have. Did you hear the ship’s crew cheering Crozier as he left?
dmsilev
David Ignatius at the Post has more details:
randy khan
I am not one of those people who think that people in the military will suddenly stop supporting Trump because of any particular action. But I do think that things like this have an incremental effect, and really just peeling off a percent or two would be pretty helpful.
Mary G
The fact that this president chose to reinstate and appear with Eddie Gallagher, a war criminal who spent hours and hours on Fox News trashing the Navy, and turn around to fire Captain Crozier is example eleventy trillion and one that our president is trash. They evacuated a couple of sick sailors, but thousands are still crammed together on the ship.
Mallard Filmore
“quarantine the carrier for the time necessary to ensure that the infection would sweep through his whole crew,”
You missed “not” between “would – sweep”
Baud
@randy khan: Yep. It’s a game of inches.
rikyrah
The crew and their families will be forever grateful to the Captain
James E Powell
So do I, but they* appear to have missed or not cared about previous outrages.
* – Is there a they? Is there a military voter bloc? I do not know. Our tendency to aggregate for discussion purposes often obscures more than it reveals.
Cleardale
Yet again, trump stepping on his own dick. Anyone who knows the military, knew Crozier’s career was over. The administration could have just quietly done nothing, let him eventually get transferred from command and retire because Crozier himself knew he would never get promoted. No fuss, no muss, plausible deniability, normal military behavior. Now Crozier is a news cycle, a martyr, maybe another percentage of trump voters who won’t be motivated to get out and vote.
retiredeng
As a Vietnam veteran (USN 1965 – 1967) aboard a guided missile cruiser with ~600 man crew I am incensed. This should have happened without “leaking” the information in order to save lives in peacetime. For this alone Trump should be shunned by all veterans!
SuzieC
My son is an active duty sailor. Rest assured that a substantial number of members of the Navy are profoundly anti-Trump.
Baud
@James E Powell:
I think veterans are heavily pro-Trump but less certain about active military.
Bex
Frank Figluzzi (former FBI) said tonight on MSNBC that firing the IG who passed the whistleblower statement that lead to Trump’s impeachment on to Congress and was fired late last night is a warning to any prospective whistleblowers who have information about Trump’s actions in the current crisis better be careful what they say. Wonder if Adam has some insight on this?
Tom Levenson
@Mallard Filmore: Thanks. Fix’t.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
I’m old enough to remember when republicans demanded we “support the troops”
Amir Khalid
Noted without comment.
Tom Levenson
@Bex: I have no actual knowledge here, but I’m betting there’s an interesting calculation going on here, that will get ever more interesting as people make judgements about Trump’s re-election chances. The more vulnerable he looks the greater the incentive to speak while it makes a difference.
Cckids
My nephew is currently on the TR; as of Thursday he was ok. He and his parents are godbothering right-wingers; I can’t tell if this will sway them or not. We don’t speak much anymore. Still hope he doesn’t get sick.
Tom Levenson
@Amir Khalid: I’m tempted to leave that one uncorrected.
Brachiator
First rule of Trump Club: Don’t make the Big Cheese look bad.
I hope this causes all those people in the military who think that Trump cares about them to re-examine their beliefs.
Trump has failed in every way it is possible to fail in handling this crisis.
Hell, he is probably thinking up new ways to fail.
Baud
@Brachiator:
Probably not.
chris
ETTD. Covers everything, doesn’t it? It’s going to take years to clean up after him.
The captain’s name, Crozier, is perfect for this story. A good leader looks after his people/flock.
Jeffro
I’m wishing all kinds of bad things on the Ill Douche, as always.
Seven months to go…
Jinchi
Unfortunately, Republicans have repeatedly shown that they will throw over any miliary professional who finds himself at cross purposes with the party. Alex Vindeman is the most recent evidence of that, and I expect that the knives will be out for Captain Crozier if he stays in the public eye. They already have a template for him in the “but her emails” category.
Amir Khalid
I still don’t quite understand how, by doing the right thing for his crew, Captain Crozier killed his career. A captain who is a hero to his crew is surely just the kind of officer any navy would want to keep.
Jinchi
It seems obvious that letting coronavirus run rampant on a crowded military ship with a thousands of sailors aboard would make Trump look bad. What did they expect would happen when it became a plague ship and people started dying? Did they think they could hide that? Self-interest alone should’ve had them rushing to get infected men off that ship. The Trump crowd don’t even have good political survival instincts.
Edmund Dantes
Already seen a bunch of trump military guys from my old stomping grounds blaming Crozier for going outside the chain of command. So the right wing is already well prepared to scapegoat Crozier.
The Pale Scot
This is what it’s coming to
Dalek Khan would be better than trump
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Baud: veterans are like anyone else. Yes some especially the older ones tend to lean Trump but we are by no means a monolith. My husband and I are both 20 year Navy vets. We are also life long Democrats and lefty liberal atheists. Each service is also different. The Air Force at least the academy seems to be run by hyper religious leaders whose mindset has infected much of the officer corps. But that’s mostly rumor…
us squids seem to be more foul mouthed and irreverent ?
smedley the uncertain
@chris: Nice
SuzieC
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
Yes!! The squids seem to be the least Trumpy branch.
Jinchi
At some point you have to conclude that Trump actually wants people to get killed.
Another Scott
@Amir Khalid: The military brass gets very, very upset when people don’t follow the chain of command. Plus, Donnie is a vindictive monster.
But Crozier was correct to do so – extraordinary events require extraordinary actions.
Cheers,
Scott.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Jinchi: I think the chain of command was ok with taking only the obviously sick sailors off the ship as there is a military hospital in Guam. They apparently would not agree to taking most of the crew off and housing them where they could be separated and quarantined. Which is what Captain Crocker want to stop the spread of the virus. Apparently some sailors tested negative and one to three days later became ill.
Mike in NC
Fat Bastard has staffed every position in his rotten organization with cowardly suck-ups. Might have worked OK during life in his shitty tower, but not so much on the world stage.
Jinchi
Yes, but even the Governor of Georgia could tell them that asymptomatic people are a prime vector for spreading coronavirus.
Mike in NC
Maybe after being forced to retire, CAPT Crozier can run for Congress.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@randy khan:
Don’t forget the “just some headaches” bullshit when 100 troops were injured and got brain damage from Iranian missile attacks after he assassinated that Iranian general
Mike in NC
This is part and parcel of Fat Bastard’s trip to Japan where everybody had to scramble to make sure he didn’t lay eyes on the USS John McCain. DOD is babysitting a 4-year old imbecile. Glad I retired while Obama was still in office.
Kattails
@Jinchi: Ooh. bring out the aloe for that one.
Evil_Paul
@Amir Khalid: In the military, going over your immediate commander’s head (whether you’re right or wrong) is essentially saying that your boss can’t be trusted to do what’s right. It’s expressing a fundamental failure of the chain of command, and tends to reflect badly on the higher ups (since your immediate commander is their subordinate). So going over your superior’s head is already one hell of a thing to do.
Assuming that it was the Capt himself who leaked the letter, going public is essentially a vote of non-confidence in the whole navy hierarchy. He may be right, but it amounts to challenging the whole system.
Crozier may be right, but by making his case impossible to ignore, he also made it nearly impossible to forgive. If an argument could be made that he had no other options but to go public, then it would kind of imply that one (or more) is his superiors had to be fired instead.
If it wasn’t the Capt who leaked the letter, then this was a supreme act of back-stabbing. Or else somebody with good intentions but utterly clueless totally screwed him.
Regardless, he shouldn’t have been fired without an investigation.
NotMax
Dolt 45. is a virulent malignant cancer on the body politic.
Every covid demise in the U.S. should hereafter be prominently labeled Death By Donald.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Another Scott:
Which is bullshit. I think the military chain of command needs to be reformed. Basically, Dems need to clean house if necessary to make sure this never happens again
Ksmiami
The administration and enablers need to hang…. leave the bodies outside of DC as a warning
Mike in NC
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: I’m aware of at least one book written by a USAF Academy graduate that lays out how the place became a hotbed of evangelicals. Apparently most of Colorado Springs is whacko territory.
LongHairedWeirdo
I’ll state my contrarian position, in the hopes that someone will give me better information. (Rule of thumb: best way to get information in the internet is not to ask a question – it’s to say something wrong.)
The stories I heard said Crozier was relieved for information security issues – the popular press knew of the situation before the brass did (is that still the naval higher-ups term? Was it ever?). And I can get that – I don’t know that I agree with it, but if we’d been in a war, and the movements of the Roosevelt mattered, that would have been a horrible screwup.
I think that’s harsh, but it’s in line with other things I’ve heard about from the military. Sure, it was a horrible, confusing situation, but when you’re captain of a ship, you’re expected to handle such situations, without people reading your letters in a newspaper before they’ve seen it from you; and, sometimes it’s better to punish someone who did nearly everything right, because what they did wrong was such a big deal.
Then again, it could be another Hugh Thompson situation – where Crozier actually did the right thing, and honorable thing, but has become officer non grata for airing dirty laundry. So I’d like to know if I’m wrong about this situation.
tokyokie
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: From my time working for the DOD, I concluded that the Navy and the Marines have the best officers, followed distantly by the Army, with the entire field lapping Air Force officers. Air Force officers will never stand up for their subordinates and will always try to palm blame off on the lowest-ranked service member. For example, the court-martial over the inadvertent shoot-down of the Iraqi helicopter a few years ago, the Air Force’s case was based on blaming the entire incident on the lowest-ranking guy on the AWACS plane. (That he was an Asian-American probably didn’t help the poor guy.) On the other side, when Marines were sent to the border region of Texas without clear rules of engagement, resulting in a Spanish-speaking goatherder’s death, the sergeant in command of the patrol claimed to have fired the shot and everybody in his unit and his chain of command sided with him.
Crozier is a hero, and Trump is a chickenshit who knowingly submitted falsified medical records to keep his worthless ass out of Vietnam.
tokyokie
@LongHairedWeirdo: The movements of ships at sea may be classified, but the Teddy Roosevelt was docked in Guam, and everybody on the island knew its location. That isn’t and can’t be classified.
feebog
@LongHairedWeirdo:
Military vet (Vietnam) here. That is some trickle down military bullshit right there. The ship was docked in Guam. Any country with a satellite in the air would know that. Capt. Crozier went through his chain of command and got no action. Seeing sailors getting ill and in danger of death he made the decision to go over their heads. I hope President Biden calls for a full investigation, and if it is found the higher ups were derelict (and I’ll put money on it) restore Crozier’s command.
@LongHairedWeirdo:
cain
@Mary G:
You know if a large number of soldiers died, then I would call this benghazi #132 I mean.. shit, losing soldiers during peace time to a virus on a carrier? Christ.
Ruckus
@Baud:
I’d bet there are a lot of trump supporting vets. But I’d also bet that there are a lot of the exact opposite. Some of it is going to depend on where the vets are located. I’d bet that not a lot of vets that I see at the VA hospital in LA are trump supporters. Now out in the some of the suburbs those percentages may change, which reflects the populations of the areas. But I’ve sat in waiting rooms at the hospital and news has come on and the groans from a number of vets is noticeable. In one not long ago there were open discussions about trump and he was not liked by anyone. So like in non vet life, I think it’s more that vets reflect the political reality where they live.
Another Scott
@tokyokie:
It’s hard to make generalizations. E.g. when the USS Iowa blew up, initially they tried to blame it on sabotage by a crew member.
In general, things have to be different at sea because if something goes badly wrong, consequences can be deadly quickly. That’s why the Navy puts one guy in charge of a ship.
If something goes wrong – it’s on his/her head because someone has to be in charge. Chain of command, procedures, etc., are very important there.
But things are obviously different when a plague is involved in peacetime, and when the procedures don’t contemplate such issues…
:-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
Ship tracking.
A ship on the surface is visible to the entire world through satellite photography and tracking. There are websites that show location and movements. There is a reason that subs stay under water, it is much harder to track them. On the surface it is no longer an issue that they can be tracked. Just like you can be found if you are carrying a phone and have service. You are then connected to the cell network and it knows where that phone is. You don’t want anyone to know where you are? Nothing modern, no cell phone, no pager(do those even exist now?) no web connection, no credit cards, for sure no apple/android pay.
Another Scott
@Ruckus: Yeah.
E.g. https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/us-naval-update-map-april-2-2020
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
Speaking of Captain Courageous, the ex-Mrs. Captain Courageous (a Time Magazine cover called Ted Turner that when he won the America’s Cup) is on my TV now (WETA is showing “The China Syndrome”). A Chevy Vega just drove up.
These snapshots in time are going to be fascinating for cultural historians in a couple of hundred years… ;-)
[eta:] She’s got her father’s eyes.
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
Hmmm…
Cheers,
Scott.
TriassicSands
Not necessarily. A President Biden could undo the injustice.
Another Scott
@TriassicSands:
NavyTimes:
History … rhymes.
Cheers,
Scott.
Gvg
Nobody has mentioned any nervousness about the prospect of a nuclear powered ship possibly ending up drifting out of control if enough of its crew become ill. This seems like madness to me. I mean it’s obvious that their are humanitarian reasons to help the crew, but the actual ship is a valuable and dangerous asset that needs to be carefully tended.
All ships, not just cruise ships, have a high potential for becoming ill. Current break down in humanitarian concerns is not limited to the US and trumps not wanting bad numbers. Japan wouldn’t let a cruise ship land, Florida’s governor doesn’t want the ship coming through the Panama Canal to land, had to be pressured to accept the Americans, Panama didn’t want to allow the ship through at first….California was hesitating over one too which was apparently due to it was actually hard to handle that many people who need to be quarantined. The aircraft carrier in not near the United States and the captains wishes might not have been possible if the host country refused. Ships in general are good places to get sick and multiple countries don’t want them.
it might be a good idea to see which ships could be brought home and docked.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Gvg: The ship is currently docked in Guam, that’s part of the US(a US territory).
MoCA Ace
So something like 4,000 young, fit-as-a-fiddle sailors… even if there was a 1% fatality rate that’s only 40 sailors. Who here doesn’t think that would be an acceptable sacrifice to protect their god emperor?
Snark? Not snark? who fucking cares anymore.
Raoul
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: My uncle, who died this past year (well into his 90s), fought in the Battle of the Bulge.
Tough, cheerful and smart old guy. And a lifelong Republican. Except for Trump. He was very disdainful of Trump. Oh, and he hated Brownback (my uncle lived in the Kansas City suburbs on the KS side).
My uncle did get more liberal (or, more like, less conservative) as he aged. But it was pretty core for him to be a Republican — but then they lost their minds, and he kept his wits, and dumped the party.
Poe Larity
@Evil_Paul: I’ll hazard that Crozier had already sent feelers up the chain and had been dressed down once or twice. You just don’t go full spectrum on a lark.
He knew someone up the chain would leak it for effect, and whomever that is you don’t want walked off the plank, you want them in their chairs for the next inanity. He knew the consequences and he’s not losing any sleep over it.
The Navy has never been fair and that’s just the way it goes.
Jay Noble
I’ve done a bit of rabble rousing in my day and somewhere in the midst of it I learned this about chains-of-command (military and civilian) “when trying to address a problem, lots of people can tell you ‘NO’. Do what you have to get to the person who can say ‘YES’, and make sure they say Yes or deny you in public. This is where Crozier was. He’d been through the chain-of-command, got NO and sailors were dying.
On the security excuse – they are whining that with all the sophisticated electronic communications equipment available to him, he sent that email out on basically as a gmail Howdy, y’all! Shades of Comey anyone?
Barb 2
Navy brat here. Dad was Navy Air and he had tours of duty aboard air craft carriers. Lots of retired and active duty Navy in western Washington. Judging from the Captain’s send off – the crew spoke very loudly on just who they supported. Plus the crew has family and they are worried about parents, dependents etc back in the states etc. We know that Trump is not making use of the military during this crisis. I’ve been areas on Navy bases where floods and tsunamis etc happened and know exactly how much the military can be ordered to do by the president.
“Trump just lost the Navy vote.” Remarked some Navy submariners. Will the crew’s send off to their Captain (of the Rooseveltb) be remembered in November?
Trump and his political appointees have screwed up.
Geminid
Admiral Chester Nimitz made Guam the main forward Pacific naval Base in mid-1944. For a while he had two commanders with complete operational staffs. One would be at sea with the fleet, and another would be ashore, planning the next operation. When the fleet returned to Port the commanders and staffs would switch, and the fleet would sail under a new task force number. For the few days during the switch Guam hosted an exceptional number of warships and support vessels.
Sloane Ranger
Thread probably dead but I was reading an article about the firing a few days ago. It included a quote from an unnamed serving sailor slagging off the Navy Secretary and hoping for the President to intervene. Presumably, given the context, to order Captain Crozier’s reinstatement.
I wonder what that sailor is thinking now?
davecb
@Cleardale: the government of the day making a big deal of firing immediately reminds me of an old colleague’s saying,
“Time wounds all heels”
evodevo
@Jinchi: I interpreted this as another one of his brain glitches, in that he got cruise liners mixed up with the TR….
evodevo
@Mike in NC: See Mikey Weinstein concerning this…been a problem for a LONG time…
Chief Oshkosh
@Mike in NC: Yep. Colorado Springs, especially east, out onto the plain, is full of fundies. But which came first? The taxpayer funded USAF cathedral on campus or the evangelical wackos? Chicken/egg?
Stephanie
Sadly, Captain Crozier has tested positive for coronavirus. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/05/magazine/navy-captain-crozier-positive-coronavirus.html