Small Wars Journal

"High Time" To Move Marines To Afghanistan

Thu, 01/01/2009 - 5:03pm
"High Time" To Move Marines To Afghanistan - Cami McCormick, CBS News

The Commandant of the US Marine Corps says it's "high time" his troops leave Iraq and take their battle skills to Afghanistan. "We are a fighting machine," Gen. James Conway tells CBS News, and the fight is now in Afghanistan...

Their role in Iraq, he says, has been reduced to nation building...

"That's not what we do," Conway told Marines in Afghanistan. "Where there's a fight, that's where the Marine Corps is needed."

More at CBS News.

Comments

Ken White

Fri, 01/02/2009 - 11:57am

Like Bill, I'm not applauding the sentiment expressed by the Commandant -- or the attitude.

I'm also confused by the fact that the Marines have expressed a strong desire to get back to their Amphibious roots yet want to go to a landlocked nation many miles from the sea...

Seems to me like a glory quest that will surely provide casualties but not much else.

We need to determine what end state we <u>think</u> we might get in Afghanistan and head for that. I submit any views of nation under the rule of law on the western model with secure borders, a productive sustaining economy, free of narco traffic, tribal rivalries and corruption is pretty far fetched -- or very, very far in the future.

Unless we are willing to train our people better and put our troops in the field in small elements, without Armor, lightly equipped with little combat support and virtually no combat service support for weeks at a time subsisting on rice and the occasional goat, we are not going to defeat any enemy that is willing to do so. We can wear them down, certainly -- but how long are we prepared to do that...

I strongly doubt a whole lot of troops and more fighting will get us a solution until we determine a realistic answer to what we expect to achieve.

Their role in Iraq, he says, has been reduced to "nation building."

"Thats not what we do," Conway told Marines in Afghanistan. "Where theres a fight, thats where the Marine Corps is needed."

Is there a hidden, or not so hidden, message in this statement? DoD is pushing IW and stability operations, and GEN Conway is stating that the Marines don't do nation building, they fight.

We faulted several folks in the Army and SOF community for jumping ship from Afghanistan too soon, so they could chase the glory in Iraq in 03. The war wasn't won in Afghanistan in 03, and it isn't won in Iraq yet. While Iraq may not be in the headlines as much as Afghanistan lately, we still have a job to finish there.

If he justified it differently, such as we're better at fighting light and in the mountains, while much of the Army is mechanized and more suited for Iraq, that would have made sense. What he said sounds like some of our senior leaders are back to the 2003 mindset of chasing the latest shinny thing.