They knew Bahrain was a problem and therefore moved operations to Diego Garcia, which is further away. Djibouti can be hit from Yemen, where the Iranian allied Houthis are after all. However then Diego Garcia was hit as well. They did not destroy too much, but the Navy moved logistics further away. However that would have pulled Lincoln out of combat range. Otherwise it would have to stay in place in range of Iranian missiles. Iran hitting an aircraft carrier would have been a massive issue.

So apparently they believed it was smarter to keep it in the fight, since Trump was going to end the war in a few days anyway since a few months now.

This is why the US used to avoid going to war with Iran. They knew it would turn into a shit show.

You're right, it's not Hegseths fault. It's his fault + all the Republicans enabling the destruction of america + all of the dumbest people in charge, who's only qualifying feature is making Trump richer.

I agree that it's a fault with the process of military planning.

However, keep in mind that fascists etc. has the kind of leadership to ignore experts' advice, an even override their existing processes.

So while we don't actually know what exactly happened behind the scenes, it's not unlikely that Hegseth had, metaphorically, a team of military experts telling him not to charge straight into the front of the machine gun positions, but he still told them to do it "for glory". Or that this happened at a lower level, by "leaders" with the same mindset, that he put there.

That’s the thing. We have a base in Djibouti.

It’s a little farther and would have taken some of the focus off of AFRICOM, but would have been a regional base outside of Iran’s capability.