Back in the Reagan days, the phrase “personnel is policy”
revealed an insight on how Washington works. Any administration is
more likely to succeed if it hires the best people who are
ideologically oriented to its goals. If your agenda is
radically-liberal, as Obama’s is, you would choose someone like Ray
Mabus, a former Mississippi governor, to be your Navy
secretary.
Navy Secretary Mabus, like Obama, believes that our armed
services are political tools, playthings to be splashed about like
toys in a toddler’s bathtub. Yes, they are all too willing to bask
in the glories of DEVGRU (aka, SEAL Team 6), but the credit for
those achievements is JFK’s, not theirs.
Under Mabus and Obama, our Navy has shrunk to World War I
levels, women are serving on submarines and we are spending untold
millions or billions on “greening” the navy. The Marine Corps is
about to be cut massively and the navy’s shipbuilding program is
being delayed, resulting in a force that may be over-stressed or
even incapable of doing its job in the next crisis.
Right now we have more admirals than ships. The fleet
stands at about 285 ships, down from the Cold War level of nearly
600. We have about 336 admirals. And some of them are interesting
picks.
In 1988, according to various sources (including a retired
naval aviator very familiar with the details), we were conducting
military exercises in the Mediterranean near Italy. An Air Force
F-4 took off from Aviano, Italy, and when it had to tank, it joined
up with a KC-135. We don’t know if the pilot or WSO noticed the
Navy F-14 that followed it off the tanker.
A short while later, when the F-4 approached the USS
Saratoga, the pilot of the F-14 asked the carrier what to
do and was told he could open fire. With his backseater screaming
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” over the intercom, Lt. (j.g.) Timothy
Dorsey intentionally fired a Sidewinder, blowing the F-4 out of the
sky. Fortunately, both the pilot and WSO, though injured, survived.
Lt. Dorsey, instead of facing attempted murder charges, was
grounded. This month, he was
promoted to admiral.
Mabus has been busy imposing Obama’s agenda on the Navy
without regard to the cost to the Navy’s warrior ethic or to the
wellbeing of Navy families. Over the protests of the submarine
community, Mabus issued a policy in 2010 that allows women to serve
on submarines. The protests were largely from naval officers — and
their wives — who objected that the close quarters would
inevitably turn the subs into submersible love boats.
The first evidence of the folly of Mabus’s action is the
firing of David Turley. Turley was the USS Nebraska’s
“chief of the boat,” the senior enlisted man aboard. He was fired
for an “inappropriate sexual relationship” with a Naval Academy
female midshipman who was assigned to the submarine for a cruise.
Yes, if Turley is guilty of that relationship he is guilty of
massive stupidity. But this incident foreshadows a degradation of
the silent service. People such as Turley are the result of decades
of training and experience. How many more will we lose to shipboard
flings?
Last May, congressional outrage caused Mabus to reverse
his decision to allow Navy chaplains to perform gay
marriages.
Mabus has also done his best to convert the Navy to “green
energy.” He has pledged that 50 percent of all the energy the Navy
uses will come from “green” energy by 2020. He has pledged to use
public-private partnerships to purchase a gigawatt of “green”
energy, which he said was enough to power the city of Orlando,
Florida. Obama took pains to praise him in this year’s State of the
Union address.
Last April — on Earth Day, of course — Ray Mabus ordered
the “Green Hornet” to take flight. The otherwise capable F-18 had
been converted to fly on a fuel brewed from the camelina
sativa plant, a weed grown mostly in Canada. (It won’t be
cultivated in California because it lacks a sufficient amount of
tetrahydrocannabinol to make a secondary market for it in
L.A.)
Which of the Obama-connected green grifters will be parts
of Mabus’s public-private partnerships? And at what cost? Millions?
Billions? Which of the Navy’s real needs will be starved to pay for
this nonsense?
The latest Mabus-created controversy resulted from his
changing the Navy’s process for naming ships. In the past, ships
were named for presidents, our greatest allies (e.g. Winston
Churchill), states, cities, and heroes. Last year, Mabus named a
ship for Caesar Chavez. For those who don’t remember, Chavez was a
political activist for illegal farm workers who played a major role
in pushing through the 1986 immigration amnesty.
That outrage quickly subsided, but exploded again when
Mabus named a ship for former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle
Giffords. Giffords, by all reports, is an admirable woman who has
shown courage in her recovery from an assassination attempt. But
only Mabus could put her ahead of people deserving of that
honor.
Such as Navy SEAL hero Neil Roberts. Remember the Battle
of Roberts Ridge? On March 4, 2002, a SEAL platoon was attempting a
covert insertion in the mountains of Afghanistan. When their
helicopter was about to land, Roberts was standing in the door,
ready to leap out. But at that moment, machinegun fire raked the
helo, causing the pilot to pull up sharply. Roberts fell out, but
his light machinegun didn’t. Left alone and armed with only a
pistol and two hand grenades, Roberts engaged the entire enemy
force. The relief force found him shot to death.
After a lot of press coverage and congressional pressure,
Mabus has said he would return the ship-naming process to its old
form.
Ray Mabus has done more than any predecessor to divert the
Navy from its primary missions of keeping the oceans free,
projecting American power, and maintaining one leg of our nuclear
triad. He’s a political hack, no better than Eric Holder or
Katherine Sebelius, and in some ways worse.
It’s time for congressional Republicans to stand up and
say that Mabus has to go. Our nation cannot afford to have any of
our military forces under the control of such a man. Tar him and
feather him, and run him out of town.
