Donald Trump Doesn’t Care if Our Sailors Needlessly Suffer—To His Shame, Juan Ciscomani Doesn’t Care Either

(Photo credit: DefenseTalk.com)

            The Iranian War (you remember, the one in which Donald Trump said we would win in about the time you could order a pizza, get it delivered, and eat it) is supported by a large US Navy contingent in Middle Eastern waters that includes the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, centerpiece of a squadron that has fired dozens of Tomahawk missiles and flown thousands of sorties against Iran since the end of February.

            Our congressman, Juan Ciscomani, less we forget, said at the start that going to war with Iran was a good idea, and early in May echoed the Trump administration’s claim that the conflict would be over within weeks.

            Where are we now? Donald Trump’s War is in its sixth month, the US is running short of ammunition, the Iranians are not running short of resistance, and the ensuing disruption to the world economy is hurting many countries, including ours. You’ve filled up your car’s gas tank lately, right?

            And the Abraham Lincoln has set an unenviable record of having been at sea since November 21 with only two days in port, and that was back before Christmas. What’s the big deal? A Navy fighting ship is just that—it’s built for battle, and while the service wants to keep its crew members as comfortable and well fed as possible, it ain’t the Ritz. It’s not even the Embassy Suites.

            Ships at sea need to call at friendly ports every so often to take on supplies and give the crew a chance to stretch their legs on dry land. But the USS Lincoln and its 5,000 sailors have been afloat for 247 days as we write this, since leaving the island of Guam on December 21. The effects on the crew are succinctly described in a military aviation magazine: “Eight months without shore leave is not a statistic to them — it is missed birthdays, missed births, missed funerals, and a horizon that never changes. Navy officials have openly acknowledged the mental-health toll of these marathon deployments, and the Lincoln’s stretch has become a case study in just how far a crew can be pushed.”

And the food onboard is getting bad, and the toilets don’t work very well anymore. All of this would be better, by the way, if the carrier and other ships off Iran could call at our Navy base at our ally Bahrain, handy in the Persian Gulf. But Iranian air attacks pretty much destroyed it, inflicting $400 million in damage. The nearest Navy supply base is now more than 2,000 miles away. Can’t sail over there very often and still keep a war going.

Families of the Abraham Lincoln’s crew have spoken out publicly about the problems aboard, particularly the mental health issues.  Finally, Trump, the services’ Commander in Chief, was asked if the carrier’s tour had gone on too long. He said, “No. No. No. Not nearly long enough.”

Trump’s deservedly taken heat for this statement. The admiral commanding Middle East forces visited the ship a couple of days ago, and it’s being replaced by another carrier on the way from the Pacific, so perhaps the administration does think there’s perhaps a problem, even if it won’t admit it.

But that doesn’t absolve Juan Ciscomani’s favorite president from heaps of criticism. The most stinging we’ve seen, and the most deeply accurate, has come from Monsignor Arthur Holquin, a retired priest who blogs mostly about religious matters. But this past weekend Father Holquin, son of a flight crew member in the Pacific during World War II, wrote this: “A man does not arrive at ‘not nearly long enough’ by accident. That sentence is the residue of a lifetime spent never having to count the cost that other people pay. It is what contempt sounds like when it has stopped bothering to disguise itself as concern. Sacrifice, for such a man, is not something felt in the body or grieved in the heart; it is a resource, infinitely available, belonging to other people.”

Juan Ciscomani, you have constantly supported a president so bereft of empathy for others, even American servicemen and servicewomen defending our country, that when he speaks he betrays “a lifetime spent never having to count the cost that other people pay.” Congressman, you should be ashamed of yourself. Your support of Trump should keep you from being re-elected in the face of the determined campaign being waged by your opponent, the retired Marine and Navy vet JoAnna Mendoza, who certainly knows how those sailors feel.