Kate Bachelder Odell has an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in which she discusses the tribulations of today’s Navy as it has gone through a series of failures in the last few years. One of her theses is the lack of public support for our Navy.

It seems an ironic thesis.

The service is trying to do too much with too little public support

goes the subheadline. Then, there’s this, from the article itself:

Capt Brett Crozier was relieved of command of the USS Theodore Roosevelt after writing a letter saying he needed to move his sailors off the aircraft carrier to arrest an outbreak of the novel coronavirus.

No, Crozier was relieved after “writing a letter saying he needed to move his sailors off the aircraft carrier to arrest an outbreak of the novel coronavirus” and transmitting it in a manner virtually guaranteeing his letter, containing classified information concerning the combat readiness of the carrier, would be leaked.

It’s instructive that Odell chose to strip the context away from her claim, a context that is critical to the import of and rationale for Crozier’s being relieved.

Odell is an example of the “too little public support” the Navy receives.