Captain crunched

As tempting as it is to bemoan the Navy’s loss of an obviously capable officer — you don’t rise to the command of an aircraft carrier by being anything less than stellar — Capt. Owen Honors’ rapid defrocking over some reportedly coarse and sexually explicit videos in which he starred was necessary. Shipboard life is notoriously salty, and lots of USS Enterprise crew members probably laughed themselves silly to see Honors, the ship’s executive officer when the videos were made in 2006 and 2007, doing the things he did. Honors surely did it for the laughs. But now he’s a laughingstock, unceremoniously yanked from command of the Enterprise, which he’d held since May. Military leadership is a combination of intelligence, decisive analytical skills and charisma. But it’s also about judgment, and Capt. Honors’ dishonorable comportment showed he’s lacking in that department — which is why he’s contemplating a career out of uniform now.

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