Well it's an idea of mine. Now everyone just relax and save the "keep your filthy hands off of my beloved Corps" howls while I explain. Right now we have the most experienced set of combat leaders we have probably ever had. They have been to war in multiple theaters and we have swapped out many of the ticket punching peace time types for warriors. That won't last though and we will end up swinging back to a break glass in case of war mentality at some point. The world will not suddenly become a safe place where puppies and unicorns can cavort, but we will lose, or have lost, the will required to deploy our forces in any significant way. The left would applaud this and already talks about the desire on the right for perpetual war. They assume that there is a blood lust for conquest, treasure and empire deep in the *** of everyone on the right. They think they must serve as our conscience and moral guide lest we run amok and trample all the peace-loving folks of Earth into submission. Yeah well...no. I would love to live in a world where I could imagine no war, it just ain't this place. This is the crappiest planet I have ever lived on, bar none. And it ain't gettin better any time soon. So the question is what to do. I propose that we make the Marine Corps a functional equivalent of the French Foreign Legion. By this I mean an expeditionary force that we expect to be fighting pretty much constantly. Do you know how many countries the French are fighting in right now? I don't know for certain, because the French don't ask permission or announce it, but it is more than a few. And we need to be able to have that same flexibility to project some highly lethal force quickly and quietly. Now I am not proposing that the Corps become all foreign staffed, just that they become more of the focus for hot spots they have always been. You see, it wasn't that bad. But let's go just a bit further and let's allow the Corps to keep it's traditional warrior ethos. So we repeal DADT, but not for the Corps and then see what happens in the rest of the military. Heck you could even make a case for keeping women out. If the Corps is to be a purely expeditionary fighting force then why do they need women if they aren't actually fighters? There are plenty of opportunities for women in the other, much-larger, services and when we decide we want women in combat roles, we can let them back in. Boy it's tough to type this with the giant calluses from where my knuckles drag the ground, but this is pure utility, not bias. Now if we can just get Congress to give a planet-wide hunting license for bad actors, tyrants and evil bastards, we would be in business. There are plenty of folks out there who assume, somewhat properly, that we have lost the will to actually fight and are just going to wind down Iraq and Afghanistan and then sit home and lick our wounds for a while. We can't allow these people to act on that assumption and take advantage of our perceived weakness. The idea of an active Corps patrolling the planet kicking the asses of anyone who steps out of line ought to give pause to all kinds of bad guys. It is just that threat, that we will let the Bulldog off his leash, that makes diplomacy possible and even useful. Oh, and Happy Birthday Marines.
Read the complete post at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Blackfive/~3/6IW45c3_n3c/marine-corps-to-become-us-foreign-legion.html
Posted
Nov 10 2010, 12:43 AM
by
BLACKFIVE