All They Want Is a Date Home
Before we talk about carriers, missiles, strategy or who is winning this war, look at the human beings inside the machine.
The USS Abraham Lincoln left San Diego on November 21.
Its roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines expected the deployment to end around May.
It is now August.
There is still no publicly announced date for them to come home. (Stars and Stripes)
No modern U.S. aircraft-carrier crew has ever gone this long at sea. The Lincoln broke the previous record at 207 consecutive days; deployed carriers normally make port every 30 to 45 days.(Stars and Stripes)
Now listen to what their families are saying.
One spouse stood before senior Navy leaders and said her husband had texted her that day that he hoped he would not wake up tomorrow.
The wife of a 13-year sailor says her husband tried to jump overboard after repeatedly having his deployment extended.
In another reported incident, a sailor preparing to go overboard was physically grabbed and pulled back onto the deck by a shipmate. (Navy Times)
Families and sailors have also described exhaustion, long workdays, food and water problems, broken toilets, moldy showers, laundry outages and disrupted mail. Some of those supply problems have since improved, and the Navy says mental-health professionals, counselors and chaplains are available aboard the ship. (Stars and Stripes)
But one sailor reduced the entire situation to eight words:
“All we want is a date home.”
These men and women understand that military service means sacrifice, danger and separation from family.
But human endurance is not an unlimited military resource.
Before we count the missiles this war is consuming, we should count what it is consuming from the people we sent to fight it.
War has a human burn rate too.
@JRem You can argue that wartime deployments get extended. Fair enough.
But when a reporter tells the President military families are concerned, his response is:
“No, they’re not.”
Families literally held a town hall to express those concerns, and lawmakers are now demanding answers.
That isn’t about whether military service requires sacrifice. It’s leadership denying what the people making that sacrifice are telling them.
Suck it loser, I already won this thread. Start a new one.
TBD
I think this needs some perspective. I’m an Army officer and I’ve deployed for a year at a time. I’ve also been unexpectedly extended, so I understand firsthand how difficult it is when the date you planned around suddenly moves.
That doesn’t make what these sailors and their families are experiencing unimportant. It does make me uncomfortable with framing every hardship of military service as evidence that someone in Washington has failed them.
We’re at war. Sometimes missions change, deployments get extended and servicemembers are asked to sacrifice far more than anyone would like. That has happened under administrations of both parties.
Absolutely ask whether an extension is necessary and whether we’re taking care of the people carrying the burden. But turning their hardship into another indictment of the current administration feels unfair to both the leaders making difficult wartime decisions and the servicemembers whose job sometimes requires exactly this kind of sacrifice.
Fair point. The distinction here isn’t deployment length alone. The Lincoln has been deployed since November 21, nearly nine months, versus an originally expected seven-month deployment, and still has no announced return date. Carrier crews normally get a port call every 30 to 45 days. The Lincoln broke the modern U.S. carrier record at 207 consecutive days at sea and Navy officials now say it has logged 250 consecutive days at sea. This is unacceptable, inhumane, and a clear reflection of the negligence that has become this administration’s defining quality.
I thought we already came through this...stop copy and pasting your AI and use some common sense or original thought! Stick to what you know (from your previous posts, not much), my longest deployment so far was 19 months. It's obvious you havn't served, 8 months and change is not much and I don't care what the "record" is...STFU, you have no bearing about what you speak!
Show me another modern U.S. carrier that logged 250 consecutive days at sea and I’ll STFU. Otherwise, your 19-month Army deployment is beside the point.
And apparently my AI bullshit is worth your time, because you keep commenting on it.
You keep waving around “250 days” like the number itself proves misconduct. It doesn’t. “Unprecedented” is not a synonym for “unjustified.”
And spare me the claim that my 19-month deployment is beside the point. I’ve lived the extensions, uncertainty and separation you’re using as material for a political post.
If you can show Lincoln could have been relieved without compromising the mission, show it. Otherwise you’re a slimeball exploiting sailors’ hardship to score a political point you haven’t actually proved.
I use 250 days because they have been at sea for that long (roughly 6–8× normal) without touching land, which is extraordinary and significant and a reflection of what conditions aboard must be, and some of them are trying to jump overboard. So yeah, that’s out of the ordinary.
No shit it’s extraordinary. You’ve now repeated that several times as if repetition turns it into an argument.
Nobody disputed that 250 days at sea sucks. What you still haven’t shown is that it was unnecessary, avoidable, or the result of failed leadership. “Sailors are suffering” does not magically prove “therefore the mission was unjustified.” That’s an emotional leap, not an argument.
I’ve actually lived through deployments and unexpected extensions. You’re sitting on the sidelines using other servicemembers’ hardship as ammunition for your politics.
So either show how Lincoln could have been relieved without compromising the mission, or admit you don’t know. Repeating “250 days” a fourth time won’t fill that hole.
April: sailors report deteriorating conditions. Reports are dismissed.
July: sailor says, essentially, we need help after a record stretch at sea.
August: families are reporting attempted overboard suicides and confronting senior Navy leadership.
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