[Cross-posted at The Daily Kos and My Left Wing]
The United States Navy rules the oceans of the world. For readers under-appreciative of the vast scope of that sentence, consider this:
With a force of approximately 50 Los Angeles class attack submarines the Navy can shut down or sink all commercial shipping anywhere, at any time, for as long as necessary, with absolutely nothing to stop them.
The Navy has its own air force with approximately 12 commissioned aircraft carriers, around 960 combat aircraft with every imaginable air and land weapon. At $4.5 billion to build, another $2 billion to equip and another $1 billion annually to maintain they can project significant force anywhere on the globe in hours.
The Navy has its own nuclear deterrent force, approximately 12 ICBM subs always on duty. Each one cost $2 billion to build, and just one of them can end life on the planet.
The Navy has its own army, an elite corps of light infrantry that is alleged to have the best mobility in the world–ready to ship at a moment’s notice. This army even has it’s own air wing, helicopter carriers at 50,000 tons each, which carry vertical takeoff jets along with an amazing array of assault and lift helicopters. Vast assault hovercraft scurry out of the bows of ships to scream forces to the beach from other ships in the amphibious unit.
The Navy has its own search and rescue corps, which in recent years has also tacked on some drug enforcement elements. Helicopters, cutters, and boats by the thousand.
To make all this run the Navy has a huge armada of fast supply ships–fuel, ordnance, parts, food–anything to make an advanced technological human enterprise run, they can deliver with serious lift helicopters and pumps. Usually underway, moving right along at sea.
The Navy even has two hospital ships, one of which is always instantly ready to get underway and fully staffed with reservists. They’re incredible hospital ships, capable of almost any medical procedure.
The commanding officers of every United States Navy ship take the ability to instantly be ready for combat and sea readiness extremely seriously. All the incredible effort and treasure expended on the Navy is useless if it can’t be instantly used where it’s needed.
I don’t watch much television, but the few snips I’ve seen about NOLA never have a Chinook helicopter in them, no Navy corpsman rescuing people. No supply ships, no amphibious assault ships, no boats, nothing. Of course some coast guard helicopters but–I can hardly believe this as I type it–the United States Navy was AWOL for NOLA.
Reports are beginning to surface as to why the amphibious assault carrier Bataan, right there and ready, did nothing.
I’m not interested in the fucking excuses that are about to follow, wherever they come from. I need to say something else.
I am respectfully requesting that every officer in the United States Navy take a real good look at every enlisted man and woman’s face they meet this day. Please see the faces for what they really are: young earnest trusting souls who depend on your leadership to save their lives and those of our citizens in the most dire teams of need. They’ll give up their own lives to make sure it happens.
Look at those faces, realize the towns and cities they came from, and know that everything the United States Navy was built and kept ready for failed a city full of faces just like them. Much more importantly, are you, as an officer, ready to take them into battle with the leadership we’ve just seen?
That answer is No, I know the officers of the Navy. I am also respectfully requesting that when responsibility for this utter debacle is meted out the enlisted men and women of the Navy not be so shamefully scapegoated as Army did to its people in Abu Ghraib. Do you, as an officer, really want to be part of an organization like that?
In the last five years I have lived through incredible heartache and terrible events, but these last eight days are by far the worst I have ever seen. With everything else that was and is the ultimate horror, I never, ever, expected the United States Navy to be AWOL when we needed them. Never.