When I was deployed at sea as a junior officer, I used milestones to track the passage of time. Each day counted toward something: a port call, when you get a break on land from the monotony at sea; the “crossing the line ceremony” when a ship crosses the equator (unfortunately, canceled at the last minute for my ship); and, eventually, the date I knew that, no matter what, I would be going home. Even on my worst days, that end point helped me stay focused on the mission and gave me something to be hopeful for.The USS Abraham Lincoln left its home port of San Diego in November and was scheduled to return home in May. That did not happen. In the middle of this month, it surpassed more than 240 consecutive days at sea—one of the longest deployments on record—and had only a brief working port call early last month, where it appears sailors did not disembark, leaving them still at sea with land in sight. The 5,000 sailors and Marines on board have been working sustained combat operations, dealing with extension after extension and unreliable access to food, basic hygiene supplies, and mail.The ship carries the name of a president who made a promise in his second inaugural address to care for people who have “borne the battle” and for their families. The treatment of those on board betrays that promise—and it is not limited to just this one ship on this one very long deployment. Rather, the crisis of the Lincoln has illuminated a pattern of callousness and cruelty toward military personnel, people who have sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. They have committed to going in harm’s way, but not to being neglected or treated with disrespect by the top of their chain of command.[Read: The timidity of America’s top generals]The military used to understand that troops’ well-being was central to their ability to perform—and that improving the quality of life for those in the armed forces was not just a nicety, but a necessity. From 2021 to 2023, I served as acting director of force resiliency at the Department of the Navy, where I worked as part of an effort to support sailors’ and Marines’ mental health and reduce their suicide risk. Across administrations, both military leaders and career civilians have sought to foster a culture of respect throughout the armed forces. Some of that work was already ongoing during the first Trump administration: a shift toward prevention, building healthy command climates so that problems did not happen in the first place rather than being responded to only after the fact. Under the Biden administration, the Independent Review Commission on Sexual Assault in the Military produced ways to report sexual assault and harassment outside one’s chain of command, and provided independent investigators for those complaints. These efforts showed promise; sexual-assault and suicide rates have both fallen in recent years.Sailors are resilient and try to make do with whatever they have. But that does not change the fact that on the Lincoln and elsewhere, they are at the mercy of poor planning, or no planning at all. Recent reporting from The New York Times and other outlets has shown that the Lincoln’s and other ships’ logistical issues could have been anticipated as far back as February, when the main base in Bahrain was damaged by an Iranian air strike, and resupply efforts were shifted to Diego Garcia, an island 2,200 miles from where carriers operate. This information was not made public, likely to save face and for operational security. Although Department of Defense leaders have had months to find alternatives, the administration does not appear to have planned for the conflict to stretch on this long.The Navy needs more capable leaders; instead, an artificial leadership vacuum is being forced upon it from above. Throughout this year, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has been weakening the Navy’s leadership by blocking the promotion of nearly 20 admirals. He removed nine officers from the one-star-promotion list in May, and then seven more from the two-star list in July—by and large women and people of color who were selected by a board of their peers. Among those blocked from picking up a second star: Rear Admiral Amy Bauernschmidt, the first woman to command an aircraft carrier, by coincidence the USS Abraham Lincoln, which she led from 2021 to 2023. For the first time in more than a decade, no active-duty woman is likely to make admiral this year, and the subject is largely being ignored as a “woman problem” instead of being seen for the leadership crisis it is.When families of the Lincoln’s sailors started talking with reporters, their complaints were met with contempt from the top. A Pentagon spokesperson, Sean Parnell, said that “legitimate challenges of a long combat deployment are being twisted into a false narrative,” and cited his own land-based combat deployment as evidence that the sailors needed to toughen up. Hegseth blamed “the reckless & shameless ‘American’ media.” The department’s rapid-response account answered reporting on food shortages by posting, twice, that sailors had ice cream. When asked whether the Lincoln’s deployment had gone on too long, President Trump’s response was to quip “not nearly long enough.”[Listen: The military Pete Hegseth wants]I do not know what a junior enlisted sailor feels when they hear these comments. But there is a saying in the military that leadership sets the tone, and when the most senior leaders are flippant at best, and cruel at worst, many will understand that to be the permissible standard. The same leaders who so loudly demand that the country support the troops are not themselves doing so. And in June, this disrespect was put in writing: The Department of Defense issued a nonpublic memo on military equal opportunity and harassment that makes it easier for commanders to dismiss formal harassment complaints and retaliate against whistleblowers. Although service members do where they are told—and over the years, I have done many things while in uniform that I personally disagreed with—the respect of the commander in chief and military leaders is not supposed to be conditional. Most of their predecessors understood caring for those who go in harm’s way as a sacred obligation.The USS Abraham Lincoln will come home. Another ship will relieve it. But homecoming is not just one day. For some sailors, the process will continue for the rest of their life. They will be expected to get back to business as normal: training, tending to the material condition of their ship, going to their new commands. They may also be moving to a new state (the Lincoln’s home port is planned to shift from San Diego to Bremerton, Washington), reconnecting with their families, and adjusting to a new pace of life. That is how the Navy operates.The Navy’s SEAL teams have a cooldown period after deployment: time for family, therapy, whatever you need to be ready for next time. The rest of the Navy has no equivalent. Whether a sailor can tend to the home front or get counseling depends entirely on her immediate command, which is to say, on her boss. And for many, the check-engine light won’t show up for years. That was true for me. The PTSD from my three deployments and some traumatic noncombat experiences didn’t really show up until two years after I had left active duty, in part because I was no longer in the middle of it.These sailors’ needs will then collide with yet another Trump-administration casualty: a weakened Veterans Affairs system. The VA eliminated nearly 30,000 positions last year. The War Horse reported on VA-medical-center policies that recommended discharging most patients from therapy after just eight sessions (far too few, according to many providers), an approach that the VA has denied adopting. The VA has lost more than 1,200 mental-health providers since the start of the administration, and demand is increasing. The department’smission statement is President Lincoln’s promise itself. The bronze plaque outside its Washington, D.C., headquarters bears his words: “To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan.” That’s not a promise the government is living up to today.