Apparently, as Voltair would say, dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres. This is effectively what Acting Navy Secretary Tom Modly has done to Captain Brett Crozier, in relieving him of his command of the carrier Theodore Roosevelt on 2 April, and then verbally abusing him in a speech to his former crew aboard the ship on the morning of 6 April. Modly offered a narrow apology that evening, but otherwise insisted that he would “stand by every word I said.”
I have taken the time to read both Crozier’s letter to his admiral and the transcript (verified by a surreptitious audio recording) of the acting secretary’s subsequent speech. This is the proper way to evaluate the consequences in public policy of both actions. I should also note that I have been finding the entire global reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic excessive, and thus am inclined to argue forcefully against the extreme sanctions currently in effect in many jurisdictions. So I may not agree fully with all of Crozier’s arguments.
Nonetheless, they were calm, well-argued, and supported with evidence. Indeed, if one takes seriously the advisories from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, repeated daily at press briefings in the White House, then one must see the Crozier’s letter as a reasonable plea to mostly evacuate his ship, to save the lives of those statistical few for whom the infection would prove fatal. I note few because sailors are mostly young and must at least pass basic physical fitness tests. Crozier is a captain of the Navy; it is thus difficult to fault him for internalizing that guidance. And that guidance would seem to demand at least a partial evacuation of the ship: failure to do so will most likely increase the body count.
Perhaps the most bothersome part of Modly’s speech was his demand that “T-R has to stand strong as warriors, not weak like victims.” Modly may have missed the recent multi-page article in the Wall Street Journal about how his Navy has been changing its initial training (Lauren Weber, "How the Navy Revamped Boot Camp,” WSJ, 29 March 2020):
Discussions about reforming boot camp began in 2016, but they picked up urgency following a pair of deadly collisions at sea in 2017. The Navy has since overhauled the training that transforms civilians into sailors. The accidents revealed a military culture that had lapsed into complacency and normalized reckless levels of risk, according to Navy investigators—so the service has gone back to basics, cutting down on classroom learning while beefing up hands-on training in seamanship and responding to emergencies.
The service is also scrapping some old ideas about the Navy’s culture. Among other things, it is moving past a “tough it out” mentality—which may have led to excessive risk-taking—to a system based on helping trainees focus and stay resilient in the face of challenges and crises.
Telling people to “tough it out” will not work for any navy in this case. As Weber noted, this particular navy has been having some trouble with that of late, even without the stress of combat. And as Crozier stressed in his letter, “we are not at war.” Modly countered that this was “one of the things about his e-mail that bothered me the most,” but his counterargument was an irrelevancy. Did publication of the letter still provide valuable intelligence to the Chinese? Of course not. No amount of secrecy was going to hide the outbreak of a virulent respiratory disease aboard the crowded spaces of a massive warship with a crew of thousands. That news was leaking sooner or later.
And what of the leak? Modly further asserts that leaking an unclassified memorandum to a newspaper is a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. He might notify us of the particular article he has in mind. But he is not even claiming that as a charge. The core of his argument against Crozier is to fault him for mailing the message to too many recipients. Modly has not identified all those addressees, and he has even been vague about the exact numbers. Widely disseminating messages for assistance speeds response, and is a common practice even in the Navy. In this case, there will be assistance needed from the Navy’s medical staff, reactors staff, Washington headquarters, and others. Without pausing to think, Modly is blaming someone else’s leak on the originator of the message. He has effectively shot not just a captain, but a captain-messenger.
Thus I get to the practical problem with the dismissal: Modly should not expect honesty again from his captains and admirals if this how he treats pleas for help. This abuse will extend the already apparent authoritarian information deficit of the Trump Administration down into the Navy Department itself. In short, Modly can no longer be trusted as a secretary by his own service, and its officers will repay him the favor.
Perhaps the more pernicious problem, however, lies elsewhere in Modly’s speech. Recall how Joe Biden has called Crozier’s dismissal “close to criminal.” True, the Trump Administration is rife with criminality, and the recent enthusiasm for firing inspectors general does little to reassure me that we are not living in a banana republic. Modly’s actions might qualify merely as hot-headed stupidity, but his speech on the Roosevelt suggested that something else was at work. However he might have felt blindsided by the letter leaking to the San Francisco Chronicle, his tirade against the free press was not just inappropriate. It was deeply dangerous. It was stock Trumpnik pabulum, of course, but his hyperbole was remarkable:
Imagine if every other [commanding officer] believed the media was a proper channel to air grievances with [his] chain of command under difficult circumstances. We would no longer have a navy. Not long after that, we would no longer have a country.
If Modly hates the free press that much, he may recall that dans ce pays-ci, de temps en temps, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another. Perhaps he would prefer that. Regardless, it is time for him to depart.
"...not living in a banana republic." Funny, Jim. We were - even before 2016. It's just been bad form to say so :)
Posted by: Dave Foster | 07 April 2020 at 16:35