The Enemy’s Vote

My grandfather Charles L. Shaw served in the U.S. Navy at the turn of the last century. He circumnavigated the globe on the USS Tennessee in 1907 in Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet. We have the certificate he received at the time, hanging in our office.

What would seem on the surface like a cool piece of family lore that the Shaw clan should celebrate is actually a little more complicated, like most things these days.

Some excellent online sleuthing by my sister and one of my adult sons determined that before joining the Navy, my grandfather was convicted of a felony and sentenced to prison in Montana. We don’t know the true nature of his crime, but I have both his prison mug shot, complete with freshly shaven head, wearing black and white stripes, as well as a later photo of him looking quite rakish in his dress Navy uniform.

His Navy service has an asterisk, I guess, which tracks with how we Shaw’s roll.

I thought of him while seeing all the coverage over the past couple weeks about the conditions aboard the USS Lincoln, a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier that’s currently in the Middle East wrapping up a record deployment of more than 200 days.

According to reports in nonpartisan news outlets like the Military Times and Stars and Stripes, there have been multiple reports of sagging morale, including sailors attempting to jump overboard in frustration over the long deployment.

I never knew my grandfather, but based on family legend, I can imagine him doing something similar.

For some perspective, I reached out to one of my oldest friends, who is also a retired commander in the U.S. Navy with 25 years of service under his belt, including two deployments on carriers in the Middle East.

In a nutshell, he thinks that nothing he’s read would indicate the morale issues on the Lincoln are unique to that situation.

“Every aircraft carrier deployment involves a very broad array of morale issues and supply challenges,” he said. “Both deployments I was on had a person who intentionally jumped overboard, and we experienced general disgruntlement regarding basic necessities and frequency of port calls. You can’t make everyone happy, and with 4,500 people on board, there are going to be some that just can’t adjust as well as others.”

Watching day-after-day coverage of the Lincoln did feel like overkill to me.

To my friend, however, the bigger issue regarding our Navy’s operations in the Middle East is not morale, but the damage sustained at the Naval base in Bahrain, a major target for Iranian drones and missiles in February and June, as was widely reported.

“The fact that the Bahrain fleet center was attacked is crucial,” he said. Referring to his own experience, “That base was central to the ability of our ship to get supplies on both of my deployments. That supply line, if interrupted, would cause a huge disruption in outfitting all ships in the region, not just carriers. Its ability to plan and execute those supply logistics was undoubtedly hampered. It doesn’t take much to disrupt it, which the enemy knows and is why it is as major a target as the asset itself, maybe even more so.”

It would be one thing if that were in the past, but perhaps more troubling, and as predicted by critics of the June ceasefire deal that’s since withered away, the Iranians have used the sixty days of on-and-off-again skirmishes to regroup and strengthen.

On August 16, The Wall Street Journal carried a story titled: Iran’s Secret Plan to Escalate the War.

It cites Arab intelligence officials who have picked up evidence that, as the world took a breath after the signing of the ceasefire agreement, the Iranian regime hunkered down to formulate a plan to “widen the war and raise the costs for the U.S.”

More precisely, the paper said, “Their efforts include giving the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps more control of the country’s regular army, appointing hardened veterans of the war with Iraq and past internal crackdowns to key posts, expanding domestic counterintelligence operations and ramping up production of missiles and drones.”

The war is clearly not playing out as we intended, which the Iranians know and are using to their advantage by stalling talks and regrouping, aware that Americans are facing still-high gas prices, its elected officials facing looming midterm elections. I suppose our best hope now is to sit and wait while sanctions and our own blockade exert enough economic pressure to get the Iranians back to the table in a meaningful way.

I believe there’s wisdom in that plan and sincerely hope it helps us navigate a path to peace.

However, as former Secretary of Defense James Mattis was fond of saying: “The enemy gets a vote.” It will be interesting to see how the Iranians choose to exercise that vote in the weeks and months ahead, and I pray for the ongoing safety, security, and success of our men and women in uniform and those leading them.