No sooner had Danny Sjursen said Army COVID policy was immorally nonsensical — than the Navy proved him right

© 2020 Peter Free

 

02 April 2020

 

 

With 4 stars like these, would well-meaning morons be an improvement?

 

Here is former US Army major Danny Sjursen — on the prioritization of real versus pretend threats to national security:

 

 

[T]he Trump - Esper - Milley national security formula . . . requires incessant forward deployment and its incumbent joint training and exercises.

 

That, however, makes the DOD’s own [COVID] social-distancing policy inherently unworkable, thereby risking a sweeping corona-outbreak in the ranks that’s liable to paralyze the very “readiness” they purport to preserve.

 

[W]hile one is far more likely to spy an Ayn Rand than a Camus book on a general’s desk . . . it’d behoove army leaders to heed the French-Algerian philosopher’s fitting rejoinder:

 

“Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.”

 

In this case, what’s inconveniently “true” is that no external “enemy” rises anywhere near the peril of coronavirus.

 

Nor can the Pentagon can’t have it both ways: “readiness” — as they define it — and “preserving the force” are opposing concepts.

 

© 2020 Danny Sjursen, Absurdity and the Army: The myth of ‘readiness’ in the corona-age, Responsible Statecraft (28 March 2020)

 

 

All true. But do not expect our cognition-challenged American four stars to comprehend what realistic brainwork requires.

 

This pampered class of parasitic humans excels at:

 

 

ambitiously elevating itself

 

atop other people's

 

command-imposed

 

often death-terminated

 

usually strategically meaningless

 

sacrifices.

 

 

And so it was today . . .

 

. . . when the US Navy indisputably proved Sjursen's point:

 

 

The commander of a US aircraft carrier that has been hit by a major outbreak of coronavirus has been relieved of command for showing "poor judgment" days after writing a memo warning Navy leadership that decisive action was needed to save the lives of the ship's crew, acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly announced on Thursday.

 

"Today at my direction the commanding officer of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, Captain Brett Crozier, was relieved of command by carrier strike group commander Rear Admiral Stewart Baker," Modly said during a Pentagon press briefing.

 

Modly told reporters that Crozier was removed for showing "extremely poor judgment" and creating a "firestorm" by too widely disseminating the memo detailing his concerns, copying some 20 to 30 people.

 

© 2020 Ryan Browne, Zachary Cohen and Jamie Crawford, Commander of aircraft carrier hit by coronavirus removed for 'poor judgment' after sounding alarm, CNN (02 April 2020)

 

 

Captain Crozier was not (actually) removed for poor judgment

 

He was removed because he forced the stalling higher ranking Navy to save his sailors.

 

Military hierarchy does not like being boxed into doing the morally right or strategically intelligent thing.

 

 

The moral? — America's top military generals need to be purged, Stalin style

 

These pompously self-important, perpetually propaganda-spewing — mental and moral midgets — have been the bane of American military and foreign policy, since the beginning of the Vietnam War.

 

They hold their leadership positions only because they are useful to the profiteering Military Industrial Complex, which pulls their compliantly indoctrinated, ass-kissing strings.

 

Sadly, the Oligarchic perks that go with these commanders' parasitic hierarchical positions will protect them from COVID-19.

 

Meanwhile, many among the much nobler swath of lower ranking American troops will die, or be permanently harmed, by the zoonotic.

 

This is not at all a difficult question or moral balance. Except so, for the rabidly egomaniacal, all-spectrum dunces, who run the United States.

 

A group of mildly intelligent high school seniors could to a much better job protecting American troops and the genuinely strategic national interest.