"Mission Accomplishment always comes before Troop Welfare." This mantra was drilled into me as a junior enlisted Marine and has stayed with me well into my career spanning professional sports, project management, and now as a writer. The premise is very simple. You always have to make sure that you focus on completing the mission. No matter if it's a life-or-death battle or something as pedestrian as a corporate product release.

You will have subordinates who always come up with plenty of needs, asks, excuses and problems that they need to deal with. They may have personal problems, financial issues, workplace conflicts, or just have lost motivation to work. And while you deal with all that, you must make sure that you are keeping an eye on the prize and getting you and your team to get the job done. This might make you the bad guy, but let's be honest. If you don't get the mission accomplished, you failed.

However, there is one major corollary to this mantra. Yes, mission accomplishment always comes before troop welfare. But if you aren't taking care of your troops, the chance of your mission succeeding drops substantially. Plenty of military leaders (and business leaders too) have always focused on the first part and completely ignored the second part to disastrous effects.

Enter the USS Abraham Lincoln. Reports of sailors and Marines tasked to the limit on a never ending deployment, plumbing issues, food shortages, and most damningly, being stuck in a combat zone for a war that we have won multiple times according to their commander-in-chief. If you were tuned into military circles, the rumors of terrible morale had abounded since a fire in the laundry room of another carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, broke out and forced that carrier into repairs.

But instead of coming home, President Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and what it's turning out to be a horde of yes-men in the Pentagon's upper civilian circle disregarded military leaders concerns of extended deployments, military readiness, manpower shortages, and the logistics of carrying out an offensive/naval blockade/missile defense/whatever Trump decides helps the stock market military operation against Iran.

Trump proving that he is not the military genius or beloved commander he makes himself out to be seemingly doubled down on the situation saying that their deployment wasn't long enough. Hegseth, a middle of the road military officer, has said that the pictures, news reports, and actual testimonies from the troops were misrepresented.

There is no doubt that the war with Iran that most Americans did not want is going poorly. But it takes a special type of incompetence to be the leader of a military and have a lack of awareness for how badly that affects morale.

Trump has long and rightfully been criticized for his lack of understanding of the sacrifice of military members. His disrespect for military awards, calling the war dead suckers and losers, and fudging the numbers of the war dead from the Iran conflict all stem from the fact that he views them as props.

When he needs a photo op, the troops are valuable to him. When he needs to give a State of the Union address and distract from the fact that the state of the union is terrible, he will march out soldiers and give them medals. A man who has mastered the art of social media deception learned that performative stunts like hugging flags, giving a thumbs up while standing on a grave in Arlington, or saluting a dead soldier in a Trump merch hat somehow convinces people that he actually cares.

But we are at war and the performance theatre of both Trump and Hegseth has gotten stale. We care about our troops being in harm's way and want them not just to be safe, but to be cared for. Military life isn't easy and no one is asking for these troops to be coddled. The troops themselves don't want to be coddled.

We will hear from the toxic vet-bro culture that these issues pale in comparison to what they did back in the day. We will get the veteran pissing contests that sound a lot like how your parents told you about how they walked to school. I have my own stories to tell. But I am also of the type of veteran to know that because I suffered, doesn't mean the people after me have to deal with stupid stuff too. Especially if it could be avoided.

Of course, we forget that Bob Hope didn't do USO Tours to look good for the public. It was because he knew how it affected soldiers to be away from home. There is a reason why mail delivery was important to locations as far away as Guadalcanal. There is a reason why we modernized our food preparation (thank you Chef Boyardee) to make sure troops were well fed. There is a reason why I got hundreds of letters from total strangers while I was in Iraq (I still have all of them).

Trump, Hegseth and their associates sold Americans on making the military more lethal. Instead, they started another forever war and stuck thousands of troops in the worst kind of stress with no support or relief. They forgot that taking care of troop welfare means a better chance of mission success. Or maybe they aren't good enough leaders to have known that in the first place.

Joslin Joseph is a recipient of the Military Reporters and Editors award for Best Commentary / Opinion. A graduate of Harvard and Ohio State, he is a Marine veteran who served in Iraq. He currently lives in Anaheim, Calif.

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