It doesn’t happen overnight; it happens gradually. He was fired in the end by someone over him who was “just following orders.” What will the next captain do, and the captain after that? Only so many people are going to fall on their own sword.
I suppose the real danger is that morale and combat readiness gradually decline. The good ones leave, the idiots remain. Recruiting gets harder, it becomes just a job.
Which is exactly what our adversaries like Russia and China want.
This has been my exact thought from the beginning. Allowing the disease to run rampant through the crew not only risks the sailors, it also affects readiness. There’s no positive to leaving an infected crew on the carrier. Best case, I can see removing the crew, quarantining them (and testing), while simultaneously having the carrier disinfected. Rotate in the uninfected once the carrier is clear.
The whole thing is FUBAR, but the captain did the right thing for his crew and the Navy.
Here’s a link to 15 minutes of recorded audio. Scroll ahead to the 1:43 (SECNAV’s somewhat ironic remark) to 1:58 (crew member’s reaction). Probably not in the same room as SECNAV, but probably reacting to the SECNAV talking over the ship’s announcing system (the 1MC) as a crew member records with their cell phone. At least that’d be my guess.
From the transcript of Modly’s remarks:
I’m going to just leave this here (bolding added)
Most people operate under a fairly brutally simple approach of ***personal ***pros and cons: Does doing the right thing result in too high a price for ***me ***to pay? That’s why most people cave (totally understandably) under torture; the pain and ramifications of having one’s fingers sliced off one by one outweighs whatever abstract benefit there may be gained from concealing some classified info for a few minutes longer.
Ditto for many Germans in the Holocaust, or people in the military who follow bad orders: They can rationalize it as “Well, if I disobey, I and my family will die, and they’ll just find someone else to do the exact same task without me, so what difference would my defiance make?”
But as for the military enforcing martial law in the entire United States, I don’t think it would happen, because in that scenario the public backlash (and backlash within the military itself) would be so strong that that equation of pros-and-cons actually works ***against ***Trump. The military leaders would sense that they would suffer ***more ***by complying with such an order than by defying it.
Thanks !
He absolutely did - no question.
I thought the usual term was warship.
Agreed, but his talking points were probably given him by the White House, or he just knew what the CINC wanted him to say.
That is a good point, but not Battleship.
I’d guess he added the unfortunate language on his own.
No lack of unofficial response to the Acting SECNAV’s remarks: Sailors reportedly 'livid' with acting Navy secretary after he blasts captain who expressed coronavirus concerns
Thank heavens. I’m sure that guy spoke for many.
Were there things the Navy could have done that it wasn’t doing?
If so, for what reason(s) was it not doing those things?
I agree with RickJay that the Navy had to fire Crozier; not firing him would have set the precedent that the media can be part of the chain of command which it can’t be if the military is to function properly.
Also, Modly didn’t say that Crozier was too naive or stupid to command, he said that Crozier either knew or didn’t know it was going to be leaked. If he didn’t know, he’s too stupid and naive to command a ship. Modly doesn’t believe that Crozier is stupid or naive, he thinks he deliberately leaked the message.
I don’t disagree that some form of discipline would be likely for a commander deliberately exposing a crisis to the media, but there are other issues that require an investigation - like why the Navy would ever for a moment tolerate endangering an entire ship full of sailors and why there apparently wasn’t more done to satisfy the concerns of the Captain of the TR.
Modly has now apologized for (some of) his remarks: Thomas Modly: Acting Navy secretary apologizes for calling ousted aircraft carrier captain 'stupid' in address to ship's crew | CNN Politics
I doubt his remarks were his idea. Trump’s words in Mobly’s body.
I agree. The two questions in my comment were in that direction.
So… the Captain made the administration look bad, therefore he had to be punished and disgraced.
Modly, a loyal foot soldier, sallied forth to do just that. But he was recorded, someone leaked that to the press, and he made the administration look bad. So now he will be punished and disgraced.
A couple of take-away points:
the sailors know damn well what their captain did for them and are not listening to the narrative re-write
Crosier actually did do exactly what Modly said a good commander should do: put the welfare of the men under his command ahead of his career, thereby highlighting that Modly was attempting to disgrace him for doing his job properly
at least one, and probably several, completely ignored the “don’t go to the media” warning issued by Modly
they did this because they may be young but they’re not idiots, and they’re well aware the current administration is lying and incompetent and might well have left the Theodore Roosevelt at sea and the problem on board hidden lest the truth made the administration “look bad”, even if that cost lives. The media may not be their friend, but at this point it’s less likely to leave them to die than an administration that tries to ignore and/or cover up problems.
The only question remaining is how long it’s going to take for the administration to track down the sailors that released those recordings to the media for their dose of punishment and disgrace which, because they’re peons, is likely to be far more severe than what Modly will be subjected to.
Really, Modly’s speech gave me flashbacks to when, in corporate America, I saw someone fired because someone else powerful simply didn’t like them and afterward tried to justify it by giving a company-wide address about what a terrible, incompetent person the fired employee was, even though everyone else knew damn well what had gone down.