The Empire Below Deck

The American aircraft carrier was built to terrify other nations. The USS Abraham Lincoln has instead become something far more revealing: a floating monument to an empire powerful enough to bomb half the world, yet too arrogant, overstretched and politically diseased to care properly for the people it sends to do the bombing. The symbolism is almost vulgar in its perfection. A nuclear-powered supercarrier — one of the most sophisticated instruments of organized violence ever constructed — prowls the waters near Iran, launching aircraft and advertising Washington’s capacity to reach virtually anywhere on Earth. Below deck, meanwhile, sailors endure exhaustion,…