NBC News: Navy Will "Temporarily" Relieve USS Enterprise Captain Over Videos

Temporary being the first step to, "Thanks for your service. Now get out".

What a screwed up story this is. Here's yesterday's post if you need to get caught up before watching tonight's NBC report.

I love how Brian Williams begins his report by saying the stuff in the video isn't suitable for a family audience. Well sport, it wasn't intended for a family audience. It was aimed at an audience of adults who were spending 6 months at war.

As for Captain Honors...how they hell could he have put himself in this situation? It can't be a mystery to a US Navy Captain that repeatedly dropping 'fag' on videos and some of those other jokes was going to end well for anyone. I get that some of it was funny but dude isn't paid to be funny. As an experienced pilot and officer he has to have some situational awareness here.

All of that said, this stuff is 4-5 years old and his ship and crew are going off to war in a few weeks (I was unsure of that yesterday but the NBC report says they off to support operations in Afghanistan).

It's not like there are extra guys laying around capable of taking a 50 year old aircraft carrier to war. Enterprise is a one off with systems unlike any other carrier in the fleet. It would be hard to find a replacement at this time on a Nimitz Class ship, it's going to be almost impossible for Enterprise (though the Navy likely has a plan by now).

If Captain Honors goes down for this, expect some guys with stars on their shoulders to take a hit as well, it's not like this stuff was secret and yet he was still moved up in his career. How exactly did that happen?

If Honors is relieved as this report claims, you have to wonder if the top brass of the Navy really get that we are a nation that has been at war for almost a decade. Yes, this looks bad to civilians and yes, the videos show some questionable judgment but the bottom line is...what's best for the war effort?

Enterprise's last war cruise (with Honors as Executive Officer and the time when the videos were made) was a record breaking effort in support of the ground troops. Seems to me whatever was in these videos either didn't hurt the crews performance or maybe even helped. Either way, that's the consideration that should outweigh everything else.

As Lincoln said when people told him to remove Grant for the casualties his battles produced, "I can't spare this man--he fights."

Captain Honors fights and so far has only produced PR casualties. Are we sure we can spare him?

As always, Lex, CDRSalamander and Information Dissemination are great sources for all matters naval.

Oh...There's a support Captain Honors facebook page. It has about 3,800 supporters as of now.

posted by DrewM. at 08:37 PM

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