The Plague Ship Meets The Ship of Fools

The facts seem pretty plain.

Over the last several weeks the COVID-19 showed up aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, CVN-71. Ships, and especially warships, are hothouses for infectious disease; cramped quarters, packed with juicy sailors, little or no opportunity for separation or sterility. Unsurprisingly, the ship's officers' were concerned for the epidemic spread of the disease.

It seems highly likely that the ship's captain requested that his higher permit the carrier to go into port and offload much or most of it's crew to prevent such spread. It's also likely, given the equally-hothouse "wartime" mindset of the current U.S. armed forces, that the higher at whatever level, refused permission.

The captain then mass-mailed a letter spamming his chain of command to, effectively, shame them into allowing him to debark his crew. I have no idea whether the captain knew his message would get out to the general public but I have to think it was at least in his mind, given that presumably he had already gone through his superior and been refused.

The resulting furor allowed the TR to port in Guam and the sailors to be debarked.

The captain was then relieved with cause.

Several days later the Acting Secretary of the Navy made a speech to the crew of the Roosevelt justifying his decision to relieve their captain.

Those are what we know of the facts.

So.

First, the SECNAV was entirely within his rights to relieve the ship's captain. Regardless of the urgency of his request, he did it in such a way as to embarrass his superiors and his service and that, any GI will tell you, is Death for a professional officer. The captain must have known this when he sent his mass e-mail and, I hope, also knew what the likely consequence would be.

Now, that said, the captain's request for evacuation was, to my mind, sound. As he pointed out, despite the ridiculous war footing We the People have allowed our nation to be set on since 2001, we are not, in fact, "at war". There is no mission that must be accomplished that requires the sacrifice of the welfare of the troops. There is no reason to assume that this warship could not have been docked, cleared, her crew tested and the infected quarantined, the vessel scoured clean, and then re-crewed and returned to duty. There is not need to have conducted some sort of amateur biology experiment by allowing an epidemic disease to infect the entire ship's company in pursuit of "herd immunity" or some such notion as was apparently the Navy's intent.

And then there's this.

It's kind of difficult to way what's the slimiest about this little screed that the Acting SECNAV pumped over the ship's intercom system to the crew of the TR. Is it the SECNAV whining about all the hate he's gotten for relieving their captain? Is it the ridiculous boilerplate about how the evil Chinks were tricksy and deceptive but the Navy is always truthful and you can trust us, really, I swear, truly, I-shit-you-not, to care about you? Was it where he called the O-6 "stupid" and "naive"? Or where he claims that he gave his personal word that no sailor would have to die unnecessarily? Or the part where he brings Joe Biden (WTF? Seriously?) into this totally-not-political oration?

Or was it later, when he claimed that he hadn't talked to the POTUS and wasn't ordered to relieve the TR's captain but was, rather, so shit-scared of getting Trumpenrage about the bad press that he shitcanned the captain before Comrade Stalin could drop by and joke with him about how cold it was in the gulags this time of year..?

Or is it now? Now, after the dumb fucking cluck has been beaten over the head with his idiotic blabber and realizes what a goddamn ass he's made of himself:

Jesus fucking wept.

When I was in the active service us grunts would talk about our officers and which ones we'd be the first to shoot in the back if it came to wart. Because although we realized that war meant some of us would die, we also knew that some of our "leaders" were dumber than a bag of fucking hammers and were likely to, if given the opportunity, get us killed not to accomplish the mission or for the good of the country but for some damn, dumb mistake or some ridiculous fuckup they were too goddamn stupid or egotistic to recognize as such. And that getting a better replacement for a dead lieutenant or captain was easier than trying to get the thimblewit relieved.

Well.

Secretary Modly has done his work, as he sees it. And I won't pretend that he didn't have grounds for relieving the captain of the Roosevelt. Every professional soldier or sailor knows what happens when you expose your superiors to public ridicule or wrath.

He did what he felt he had to do and fell on his sword for his crew. Fine.

The real question now is...what should We the People do about a meeching little shitweasel like Acting Secretary Modly?

What should his fate be?

What does he deserve?

And what will become of us if we are not infuriated if he does not - as he will not - receive it?

Update 4/7: The slimy little bastard resigned after being a lightning rod for anger at his sliming an officer who was willing to burn his career to protect his crew and hectoring a crew who are already infested with the Plague.

I'd call it a "happy ending" except Trump will replace him with another sycophantic GOP oxygen-thief. That's what we've got, here in the Plague Year.