US Navy Can’t Fight Iran—and its Own Crews Too

It isn’t just the people of the United States and Israel who should care about the recent jumping overboard by a seaman on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on Aug 3, 2026. The entire planet’s safety requires a non-nuclear Iran. A future with the US and Israel failing to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of the Iranians is one parents would have to be heartless and cowardly to leave their children.

It should then give real pause that a US sailor should commit such an act. As with the turn of phrase, “jumping ship,” this seaman’s AWOL is the most serious imaginable. Leaping overboard during a war, compromising operations on a US aircraft carrier in a combat zone, causing the vessel to divert from its mission whatever attention required to rescue the deserter, brings back into focus the Bowe Bergdahl case. Sergeant Bergdahl simply walked away from his post in Afghanistan and was captured by the Taliban. Official US Army investigators refuse to admit that a half dozen servicemen were killed searching for the sergeant, but members of Bergdahl’s own unit assert as much.

Here too, the US Navy is understandably tight-lipped regarding the facts of the matter. They admit a seaman did jump overboard, that he was wearing a life-vest, spent about an hour in the water, was rescued, and then placed on medical hold. But they’re not uttering a word about the reason for this sailor’s behavior—while the world’s press and social media is awash with plenty of answers.

CNN and other leftist media, opponents of the war and eager to seize upon anything to criticize its prosecution, have trotted out an entire litany of supposed complaints from the Abraham’s crew: the lengthy deployment, bad food, poor hygiene, broken plumbing, decline in morale, etc. That’s not, though, what many of the sailors and marines on the ship itself are calling the problem; they accuse a small group of slacking malcontents of going so far as to stuff shirts down the plumbing, trying to force the vessel to return to port for repairs, their answer to bring the nine-month long deployment to an end.

Seamen and marines though have access to the infosphere as well, going on to say that some of their mates aboard joined the Navy expecting cruise ship accommodations and now with their first stint at sea being a serious one, instead of facing up to the challenges and getting on with the job, are resorting to sabotage—and mutinous acts like jumping overboard—in order to get their way.

This entire episode, whatever it turns out to be, is embarrassing and certainly does no service to the dignity and honor of the US Navy. Secretary Hegseth himself should immediately insert himself into this matter and direct the admirals in command of both the Pacific Fleet and the 5^th Fleet to give him some indisputable answers.

And those unvarnished answers need to be put before a none-too-pleased American public.