Not Enough

24 November 2006



Marines Looking for Even More Good Men

Commandant of the US Marine Corps James Conway, who has been in the job all of eight days, has said he doesn’t have enough troops to do all that is demanded of them. Actually, he said it using much kinder words, but the effect was the same. The top Marine says his men and women are being asked to do too much. The choice is to increase the number of Marines or to make fewer demands on those he commands now. Iraq-Nam has stretched even the Marines to the breaking point.

This journal confesses to a certain childlike awe of the USMC. They are, quite simply, the finest assault troops in the world. They also tend to be kids. They combine the enthusiasm of youth with the training that put US forces in the halls of Montezuma and on the shores of Tripoli. The result is an organization that has as its motto “Semper fidelis” (“always loyal”), but which could just as easily be, “Impossible my ass.”

The present strength of the USMC is 180,000 or so. The Corps would like to give its members 14 months at home for every 7 months in combat. The demands of Iraq-Nam and Afghanistan mean that isn’t happening. General Conway said that the current force level may be OK for peacetime. However, “Where the force is engaged and is more stressed, I think that that number needs to somewhat be more variable.” That means, give him more personnel to do the job.

“Our Marine Corps has become, I think, a very counter-insurgency capable force but we’re not providing to the nation some of the other things that we should be able to do in virtually any other nature of contingency,” he added. Moreover, the stress on the individuals means that they will not be available in future. Commandant Conway explained, “The payback is you can't maintain that surge. And it’s probably going to have an adverse impact” in the future. The Washington Post notes, “The Marines are also drawing up plans to send some reserve combat battalions back to Iraq for return tours as a way of relieving the strain on the active-duty forces. If that is done, it would be the first time such Marine units would be returned to the war.”

In other words, the wars in Iraq-Nam and Afghanistan mean not even the USMC can take on additional duties under the current set-up. Because of training requirements, the best the Corps could do is increase its size by 1-2,000 a year. Iran, North Korea and Darfur cannot now be addressed by force. America hasn’t got the guns. No wonder James A. Baker III is working to save George “LBJ” Bush’s bacon.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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