Capt. Crozier was inspired by TR saving his men from yellow fever in 1898 Cuba.
Last edited Mon Apr 6, 2020, 06:14 PM - Edit history (2)
Wednesday Trump said about the captain of the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, I want him fired.
Thursday the forgettable flunkie of the moment Trump has installed as Acting Secretary of the Navy fired the Roosevelt's Captain Crozier.
We now have fascinating additional historical background. In case you haven't seen Tweed Roosevelt's NYT column yet, please read it.
Captain Crozier
Is a Hero.
Theodore Roosevelt,
My Great-Grandfather,
Would Agree.
April 3, 2020 by Tweed Roosevelt. Roosevelt is a great-grandson of Theodore Roosevelt and the chairman of the Theodore Roosevelt Institute at Long Island University.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/opinion/coronavirus-crozier-roosevelt.html
[my extreme condensation of key parts:]
...I often wonder, in situations like this, what Theodore Roosevelt would have done. In this case, though, I know exactly what he would have done. In 1898, he found himself in almost the exact same position.
Before his rise to national politics, Roosevelt commanded the Rough Riders volunteer cavalry regiment in the invasion of Cuba during the Spanish-American War. The Battle of San Juan Hill had been fought and won, and the war was basically over.
However, the soldiers, still deployed in Cuba, faced a far worse enemy: yellow fever and malaria. ...Before modern medicine far more soldiers died of disease than of enemy action. The battlefield commanders in Cuba, including Roosevelt, wanted to bring the soldiers home. But the leadership in Washington -- in particular Russell Alger, the secretary of war — refused.
With the tacit approval of his fellow commanders, TR wrote a fiery open letter and released it to the press. Alger relented and the troops were sent to quarantine on the far end of Long Island.
Though hundreds of American soldiers died from yellow fever and malaria contracted in Cuba, the evacuation off of the island doubtless saved the lives of many others
[end of my condensed version. please read the whole column!]
______________
(This being DU,) First, a couple of caveats: 1. The Spanish-American War was a big, bloody land grab on the United State's part, conducted on trumped-up pretenses. It was brazen colonialism. Spain's colonial empire was disintegrating and we went out and got pieces of it while such overt western colonialsm was still a thing. (My own father served in our Navy in Cuba in 1938-39. And, coincidentally, in WWII with MacArthur in New Guinea, was stricken with malaria and evacuated home. An evacuation needless to say I am extremely grateful for. I was born a dozen years later.) Caveat 2. Teddy Roosevelt was a complicated man, a roaring fireball of much of both the best and worst about America. On steroids -- his great aspects were among our greatest, his worst (which thankfully were fewer) were among our worst. Little of this is disputed anymore.
None of that is what this post is about. It's about a leader's responsibility to the personnel under his or her command.
On to this weekend's insight:
I've realized from TR's great-grandson's column in the Times, that before he acted this week Capt. Crozier WOULD HAVE KNOWN that yellow fever & malaria part of Teddy Roosevelt's history in Cuba.
Captain Crozier drew inspiration and additional strength to act FROM THE SHIP'S NAMESAKE HIMSELF.
This has to be the case. There are only... 11(?) large aircraft carriers in our fleet. A single carrier task force of ships costs very many billions of dollars. The handful of officers the Navy chooses to command those carriers are brilliant and exceptional individuals. Some of our nation's best. Most are not mere warriors, but warrior-scholars, experts not just in naval warfare, but having wide knowledge of America and the world and the histories of both.
Roosevelt himself was a hyper-intellectual, a lifelong voracious reader, and authored books himself. I guarantee that after Capt. Crozier was picked to command the U.S.S. Teddy Roosevelt, by the time he was piped aboard it was after already having read multiple TR biographies as well as TR's own books.
Naval officers are taught about about TR to begin with. I was a naval officer, and I was. TR, for all his faults, was one of our great Secretaries of the Navy*. (Quite the irony, that -- see our miserable, craven Acting SecNav last week.) [* MAJOR CORRECTION: My how much I've forgotten. TR only made it to ASSISTANT Secretary of the Navy. As such though, and being TR, he had more influence on the service than most actual SecNavs.] And later as President he built the Great White Fleet, America's first truly global navy and its largest since the Civil War.
Last week Capt. Crozier had to have been struck by the parallels of the situation he was in, with Roosevelt's own in 1898, his troops needlessly dying around him. Both of them facing the outbreak of deadly disease among the men - and today, women - each was responsible for. Struck by the irony as well, for this disaster to be happening first -- well, we hope it was the first -- on this particular aircraft carrier. (All told, this has been an event just full of irony.)
What would Roosevelt himself have done?
Crozier didn't even have to research that. He already knew. His bold and selfless action this past week was a direct echo, although a LESS insubordinate one, of the ship's namesake himself!
Carpe Diem. Seize the Day.
It frankly would have been a disgrace to the great American, the ship's namesake, to do anything else short of saving his crew, be damned with any costs to himself. Capt. Crozier last week understood that, too.
As Tweed Roosevelt writes in his column, TR had been in line to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor after Cuba. But Secretary of War Alger was furious at him over his yellow fever/malaria public actions, and took revenge by derailing the medal. Alger was the Trump of 1899.
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