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
    31·
    4 days ago

    You’d be cool with your best friend who joined the military because he doesn’t have a dad and is too poor to move away to get a better job somewhere, starving while on deployment?

    I’ll answer for the other guy.

    Of course I wouldn’t be “cool” with it. I feel terrible for these soldiers in this position.

    But I can’t help these soldiers without simultaneously supporting their mission, which leads to more deaths.

    That’s the problem: you feed these guys and they’ll just be able to load bombs onto planes faster, so more city blocks get destroyed, more schools and power plants get bombed, more hospitals get bombed, more bridges get destroyed, more people die directly from bombs, from injuries due to bombs, and from otherwise preventable causes if infrastructure was in place. etc., etc., etc.

    These deaths can easily number in the hundreds of thousands.

    But, of course, it’s actually quite sensical to want your friends not to be hurt! I understand where you’re coming from and I’m not saying you’re wrong to want them not to starve to death or throw themselves overboard. I’m just saying that there are other people in the world, people that your friend’s professional mission is to kill, and those other lives also have value no matter how hard we shut our eyes.