Several of us are dismayed by the antics of the Government we once served, attempting to do so with honor. Oh well, this is Marlow’s take on other events in the extraordinary (and banal) events in Your Nations Capital.This one refers to the Swift Greyhounds of The Fleet, or what is better known as Tin Cans.

Bless all that go down to the sea in Ships.

– Vic

Marlow: “Well, ain’t our national swamp a geographical oddity. Two weeks from everywhere . . . and light years away from justice.

This week’s highlight came late for me — the utter Cover the Brass’s Asses collapse of multiple US Navy investigations of two fatal ship collisions in the Western Pacific.

The brass strove nonstop to draw a line between themselves and the deployed sailors who sailed aboard those WESTPAC tin cans. But these double-speaking Odysseuses were not that far from those distant soggy bottom sailors. With every convoluted, circuitous, and at times all-together baffling investigatory and court martial screw up, they blurred the very lines they strove to define.

Consistent malefaction, ambiguity and contradiction marked the brass’s repeated deployments in the troubled waters of undue command influence. They openly bemoaned the negligence and guiltiness of the ships’ company for these sailors’ loss.

This week’s press release “fare-thee-well” song to these incidents at sea were once again full of more double speak, reframings towards the grieving families and white washing of their own culpability. It was a poor disguise that couldn’t fool a blind man to their roles and actions. They must think they can hide their own guilt in plain sight with this abject PR bullshit.

Ah the paradoxes of conscious, deliberate double-facedness in their speaking in circles . . . on the one hand there is a black comic element to these characters, but on the other if we look deeper we may see that they tried to fix what they had let become FUBAR before the collisions. Still I can’t permit myself a sympathetic reading of these men. Their cunning acts were of poor quality, making them even more overtly fallible and culpable.

Will any of us remember these dead sailors five years from now? I will. We all should. So in their memory . . .

Tin Cans of Constant Sorrow

We’re tin cans of constant sorrow
Our sailors’ve seen trouble all their days
We bid farewell to old Yokosuka
The place where we were sent and based
The place where we were sent and based

For many long years we’ve seen troubles
Little pleasures have we found
For in this WESTPAC world we’re bound to scramble
We have no DC friends to help us now
We have no DC friends to help us now

[Refrain]

Well we’re tin cans, we’re just tin cans
We’re tin cans of constant sorrow
We’re tin cans, we’re tin cans
Many of our sailors have no tomorrow
They’ve seen the last troubles of their days

Is this the time for goodbyes to our sailors
We don’t think we’ll see them again
For we’re bound to sail these WESTPAC waters
Perhaps we’ll sink under a coming Chinese missile rain
Perhaps we’ll sink under a coming Chinese missile rain

[Refrain]

Well we’re tin cans, we’re just tin cans
We’re tin cans of constant sorrow
We’re tin cans, we’re tin cans
Many of our sailors have no tomorrow
They’ve seen the last troubles of their days

War will bury us in some deep ocean valley
For many years we may lay
When the world learns to love another
While we and ours are sleeping cold in our grave
We’re sleeping cold in our watery grave
We’re sleeping cold in our watery grave

[Refrain]

Well we’re tin cans, we’re just tin cans
We’re tin cans of constant sorrow
We’re tin cans, we’re tin cans
Many of our sailors have no tomorrow
They’ve seen the last troubles of their days

See the source image
USS MCCAIN and her lost crew

See the source image
See the source image
USS FITZGERALD and her lost crew

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