Good News: The USS Abraham Lincoln Is Finally Home!

After 321 days at sea, the sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln are finally holding their families.

Happy Sunday, everyone. This week’s good news is one we’ve been waiting on for a while.

On Thursday, the USS Abraham Lincoln pulled into Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego, and thousands of people who had been waiting the better part of a year got their sailors back.

The reunion of sailors and families was the sort of feel good viewing that is hard to come by these days. Take a look for yourself.

These sailors left San Diego on November 21st of last year. They were gone for roughly 321 days. For 265 of those days in a row, they never set foot on land. No port call, no break, just war at sea. They did everything their country asked of them, even when a great deal of it should never have been asked in the first place.

The conditions aboard the Lincoln were atrocious and many sailors suffered both physically and emotionally from the combination of deteriorating conditions, length of deployment, and not knowing when they were coming home. The human toll was enormous. And what hit me as a father was knowing how dozens of sailors had babies at home that they had never met, and they were losing precious moments they would never get back every day the deployment continued longer that it should.

And there’s a reason they came home when they did. Back in August, their families decided they’d had enough. They packed a town hall at North Island and told Navy leadership to its face what their sons and daughters and husbands and wives were living through. They talked to reporters. They went on camera. Their words prompted San Diego’s congressional delegation to demand an investigation.

Then look at what happened. The president had initially said the deployment was “not nearly long enough.” An even greater uproar ensued. Members of the Administration as high as the Secretary of Defense went so far as to say the families were lying about the severity of the conditions.

But eight days after that town hall, the Navy announced that the Lincoln was coming home.

Here’s some inside baseball about the military: major changes to a planned rotation don’t happen that quickly. A few people with a lot of power decided that the negative press was getting to be too much and made the call to bring the Lincoln home ASAP.

That’s how you know those families made a difference.

These days, it’s easy to think that speaking up doesn’t change anything. That the people in charge will do what they want no matter what, and the rest of us can only complain about it on the internet. I hear it from folks all the time, and I’ll admit I’ve felt it myself more than once.

But look back at this year, and you’ll find that the people keep proving that idea wrong.

In January, the administration abruptly cut about two billion dollars in mental health and addiction grants. States, doctors, and recovery advocates from both parties raised the alarm, and within about a day, the money was restored.

This summer, bulldozers rolled into Big Bend National Park to clear land for border barriers. Hunters, ranchers, sheriffs, retired park rangers, and plain old Texans who love that place raised so much hell that the administration paused construction and started rethinking its plans.

And just this week, after the White House spent taxpayer money running ads glorifying the president during football games, people across the political spectrum objected so loudly that he announced taxpayers would no longer foot the bill.

None of those things happened because someone in power suddenly became more ethical. They happened because regular people showed up and spoke out. They called, they wrote, they packed rooms, and they refused to let it drop.

Our government was built to answer to us, and no matter who’s in charge it still can. Not every time, and almost never as fast as it should. But the pressure works.

So the next time you’re tempted to believe your voice doesn’t matter, remember the pier at North Island. This week, a sailor held his child for the first time, because enough people refused to stay quiet.

So welcome home, sailors.

And that, my friends, is good news for your Sunday.

— Adam