DID LOCAL MARINES AND SAILOR DIE IN VAIN?

Those who serve in the U.S. military deserve Americans’ profound thanks. San Diego should be immensely proud of its long history as a military community. When tragedy strikes — such as in the deaths last week of five Camp Pendleton Marines in Imperial County when their MV-22B Osprey crashed — the local sense of mourning is intense and wrenching. But as another recent fatal accident shows, these service members often bear no responsibility for the mistakes of those in charge of their lives. And too many mistakes have been made.

In 1971, The New York Times printed the Pentagon Papers — the government’s secret history of the Vietnam War. The account laid bare the dishonest way that military and civilian leaders alike had misled Americans about their nation’s enormously costly, abject failure in what soon became remembered as the first war the United States had lost.

In 2019, The Washington Post printed what inevitably came to be known as the Afghanistan Papers — based on internal Pentagon reports on U.S. actions after the 2001 invasion. They laid bare the dishonest way that military and civilian leaders alike had misled Americans about their nation’s enormously costly, abject failure in building a stable, secular ally. This nearly two decades without significant progress led the Biden administration to abandon the war in summer 2021 — U.S. loss No. 2.

Yet after both of these U.S. humiliations, the blame was widely diffused. When everyone’s to blame, no one’s to blame. Unfortunately, it is now time to wonder if once again basic tenets of military accountability and honor are being ignored. The catastrophic July 2020 sinking of a 35-year-old assault amphibious vehicle (AAV) off the San Diego coast — in which eight Marines and a sailor were killed during a training exercise — was a huge failure of leadership, management and common sense.

Three investigations, one by the Navy and two by the Marines, found that AAVs used in the exercise were decrepit and unreliable — a lead investigator called them “garbage.” But were the nine who died prepared for the possibility of an emergency aboard the death trap they had been compelled to board? Minimally. Marines on the vehicle had not completed mandatory training for either underwater vehicle evacuations or swimming — either of which could have saved lives when the AAV began sinking.

But the ways that incompetence led to nine preventable deaths don’t end there. An evacuation of the AAV wasn’t ordered until 45 minutes after it began taking on water. During this span, the vehicle’s generator and transmission failed, and its bilge pumps — which remove water that collects in the bottom of the inside of the hull — were overwhelmed. Meanwhile, despite formal Navy and Marine Corps rules, there were no safety boats nearby during the exercise. It is not Monday morning quarterbacking to believe that people would be alive if some or any of those entrusted with their safety had displayed a tiny modicum of sense.

There has already been significant fallout from this tragic debacle. Twelve Marine officials were removed from their jobs or otherwise disciplined, The Washington Post reported in May 2021, including Maj. Gen. Robert F. Castellvi, who was commanding general of the 1st Marine Division at Camp Pendleton when disaster struck. This week, the fallout continued as Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro issued letters of censure to some of these officials. The highest-profile name was retired Marine Lt. Gen. Joseph Osterman, who was in charge of the Camp Pendleton-based I Marine Expeditionary Force when disaster struck.

But are these actions truly proportionate responses, given the scope of this tragedy? If they do little to satisfy the anguished families of the dead Marines and sailor — and the San Diego community in general — that is fully understandable.

Remember, being removed from one post isn’t the same as being removed from the military. Censures are reprimands that offer no assurances that those who received them won’t continue moving up through the ranks. Playing musical chairs with top jobs and issuing paperwork won’t bring back the nine dead — or ensure that they did not die in vain.