Navy Camaraderie.

I've been following a viral story about a Navy Captain who is being demonized for a humorous video. This is my view of this story.

If you haven't heard the story, it is about a lewd video that is unbecoming a Naval Officer. The officer is Captain Owen Honors and the video was part of a series of videos he made for the crew while serving in the capacity of Executive Officer of the USS Enterprise. I watched the video and it is clearly evident that it was created in a humorous manner that depicts the antics of shipboard life.

The problem is the lack of understanding of how the military functions. The #1 rule in the military is "Work hard. Play hard". The role of the Commanding Officer and the Executive Officer is to play "good cop/bad cop". The XO is always the "good cop" and one of his duties is to build camaraderie among the crew by being the master of "play hard" ceremonies.

Military men and women are a different breed, we don't play by the Politically Correct rules that most of the civilians do. This kind of fun, off-the-wall humor isn't offending to any of us, but it does, apparently, offend the general public. Much of the misunderstanding comes from not seeing the world of the military through the eyes of those who serve.

I have another, personal, experience that became misconstrued and was, and still is, used to demonize a U.S. President when he bolstered camaraderie. The civilian masses simply know the story as the "Mission Accomplished" fiasco aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. Here is the real story through the eyes of the military.

The Lincoln Battle Group deployed to the Indian Ocean, leaving San Diego on July 20, 2002. Our initial mission was to provide air and sea support for ground forces in Afghanistan. This was our role in Operation Enduring Freedom. We successfully flew thousands of sorties in keeping our troops protected from the sky. In November of 2002 we transited into the Persian Gulf to continue support of OEF, but to also participate in the decade-long Operation Southern Watch. Scuttlebutt was that we may extend the war on terror into Iraq. This is months before the civilians learned of this. We were set to "out-chop" from the 5th fleet and the operations in the combat zone in December. Rumors turned into actual preparation for a possible return to the Gulf to participate in the opening campaign against Iraq.

Navy deployments, unlike the Army deployments, are 6 months long and our time was up and we headed for Perth, Australia to spend Christmas there. The news, that Christmas, was dominated by Bush's ultimatums for Iraq to disclose all documents related to their nuclear program. We knew the odds of us going back were high and when we pulled out of Australia to head home, Admiral Kelly told the crew that if we were to be called upon for action in Iraq we would have to re-surface the flight deck. The point of no return on our way home was Guam. If we stopped there it would be to re-surface the flight deck and we would turn around and head back to Iraq. We never made it as far as Guam.

It was New Years Day and we hadn't even made it to Indonesia when we realized that we were heading south again. We were on our way back to Perth to resurface our flight deck. It has become known as the "Big U-Turn" and Admiral Kelly quipped "Get Over It!".

We returned to the Gulf to "relieve ourselves on station" January 20th, the very same day we were scheduled to pull into San Diego to end our "war cruise". The rest is history known as "Shock and Awe".

We did our job and we did it well. Ground forces were in Baghdad when we finally "out-chopped" for the second time on the same cruise and were relieved by the USS Nimitz, on station. We had over 300 reporters onboard with us that planned to stay with us because we were going to end our record-breaking deployment by making a record-breaking run across the Pacific to return home. We made that run in three days and we were welcomed home by the President of the United States, our Commander in Chief, George W. Bush. Our 6-month initial mission and our secondary 4-month mission had both been accomplished and we returned home with all souls onboard, we didn't lose any crew members which is a rarity even on peace-time deployments. A banner was placed on the "island" (superstructure) of the ship that declared "Mission Accomplished". This was an announcement for the Lincoln Battle Group's mission status. It felt good to finally be home.

After Bush's speech to the nation from the flight deck, he spent nearly an hour with us on the flight deck as the Secret Service agents tried to wrangle him down to his other engagements. During this meet-n-greet Bush pointed up to the banner and stated; "I'm going to catch hell for that, you know." We didn't really know, but it soon became evident that our mission status had become misconstrued to represent the mission status of all our brethren still fighting the war on terror, which simply wasn't the case.

Now, you've read the events as seen through the eyes of the military and seen how things get misconstrued. Does XO Honors' "lewd" video still garner a harsh condemnation?