Families of US sailors denounce Trump and Hegseth for ‘dismissing their experiences and calling them liars’
www.theguardian.com
One US sailor’s mother asks: ‘My son signed up to serve his country. But why isn’t his country serving him?’

They spoke of insufficient nourishment that has led to close relatives losing 20-30lbs in weight since they were sent to the Middle East five months ago, leaving one sailor “emaciated”, according to his mother.

They spoke also of low-quality drinking water and scarce mental health counseling and support despite the intense burden of being at sea for months on end without making land.

The USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier with more than 5,000 sailors and marines onboard, has been at sea for nearly nine months, having begun its deployment in November. There have been reports of multiple suicide attempts including jumping overboard.

When Trump was asked on Friday whether naval families were worried about conditions on board, he replied: “No, they’re not.” He said that the Lincoln’s deployment, now in its ninth month, was “not nearly long enough”.

  • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    32·
    3 hours ago

    I feel sympathy for these sailors, at the same time I’m not really enthusiastic about the mission they’re on.

    Is my political goal supposed to be to feed these sailors better so they can more efficiently service the machinery that kills children who did not sign up to be killed the way these sailors signed up to be killers?

    • pelespirit@sh.itjust.worksOPMEnglish
      32·
      3 hours ago

      They did nothing to deserve being starved by our own government. This is the most likely scenario:

      • Person joins military to pay for college or stay in and have a life so they can have a family.
      • Gets sent on this mission by a dementia ridden narcissist because he thinks he’s the king
      • Instead of basic human treatment, they’re being starved and left with no supplies.
      • Some are trying to commit suicide.

      They are not the problem.

      • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        21·
        2 hours ago

        You kind of do need soldiers to fight wars, so their existence as volunteers is sort of a problem [edit: if wars of aggression are a problem for you; maybe they’re not].

        But tell me, if you live in reality, your options are either:

        a) to feed these soldiers well and thereby by making them more able to kill other people
        b) do nothing and allow these soldiers to starve, thereby making the war machine less effective and saving lives of other people.

        I mean, if you want to be morally serious, it’s either:

        • these soldiers–who voluntarily signed up to enlist in a military that has been at constant war since before all of them were born

        or

        • innocent civilians who have done nothing but be born in the wrong country

        and, you know what? fuck it. I’ll go there:

        along with

        • the soldiers in a military that are defending themselves against an unjustified and unprovoked attack by a country that isn´t even pursuing its own best interests in a vain attempt to prop up the military might of an allied state bent on genociding their way to lebensraum.

        You can feel sorry for them all you want, but you can´t feed them without supporting a war that will probably ultimately cause a lot more starvation than on a few ships.