In 2006, I was deployed aboard the USS Iwo Jima as a Marine. Israel invaded Lebanon that summer and we were diverted off the coast of Beirut, where we stayed underway for weeks, without port calls or a break, while we evacuated U.S. citizens. The pace of operations was relentless; it put a strain on all of us. After several months, we returned home. Days before we pulled into our home port, word spread through the ship that a member of the crew had been found dead in his rack—a suicide. Days later, when we flew off the ship to be reunited with our families, his body was loaded onto one of those flights, to be reunited with his.
I thought of this reading the extensive recent coverage of the USS Abraham Lincoln, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, currently deployed in the Persian Gulf. It has been at sea for more than 260 days, a record for the ship. Roughly 40 of those days underway have been during sustained combat operations, which places an additional strain on the crew. And earlier this month, a sailor leapt off the flight deck and into the water. Fortunately, the sailor was recovered and evacuated after what appears to be a suicide attempt, with several other attempts now reported.
This incident has become a cause célèbre in the media, which appear happy to leave readers with the misperception that long deployments and psychically strained sailors in the U.S. Navy represent a situation unique to Trump’s war in Iran. “Conditions on U.S. Aircraft Carrier at Sea for More Than 250 Days Raise Alarms” blared a BBC headline. “Concerns Grow Over Conditions on Navy Carrier,” reported The New York Times. Dozens of similar headlines appeared alongside, and the story led more than a day of television news coverage. The story about the conditions on the Lincoln has gotten so out of control in its virality over the past few days that U.S. Central Command took the unusual step of debunking certain specific online rumors directly on X, and CentCom commander Admiral Brad Cooper made a stop onto the Lincoln over the weekend. Democratic Senators such as Richard Blumenthal and Ruben Gallego have publicly asked the Navy, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, to account for conditions aboard the Lincoln.
