A Response to an Article on the Marine Corps in The Fiscal Times
A Response to an Article on the Marine Corps in The Fiscal Times
Butch Bracknell and Adam Tharp
David Francis must have been working against deadline when he wrote “Why Afghanistan Might Be the Marines’ Last Fight” (The Fiscal Times, May 6, 2013), a paper-thin analysis of the strategic requirement for a US Marine Corps in the 21st century. Francis gets about as many things wrong in the article as right; our challenge is deciding where to start in highlighting his lack of research.
While the Marine Corps is tasked by the Secretary of Defense with the "primary responsibility for the development of amphibious doctrine, tactics, techniques, and equipment," it is not a niche service waiting for the next "Inchon." Instead, Marines have used the efficiencies of the sea as a means to quickly move around the globe to execute the congressionally mandated mission of "seizure of advanced naval bases and for the conduct of such land operations as may be essential to the prosecution of a naval campaign…and other duties as the President may direct."
Marines were the first non-special operations forces into Afghanistan in November 2001, conducting an amphibious, ship-launched helicopter assault over 400 miles inland to Khandahar. Likewise, in the initial Iraq invasion, 80,000 Marines accounted for nearly 75% of maneuver forces. When the 25,000 man US Army V Corps culminated in Baghdad, it was the Marines who moved a hundred miles north to take Tikrit. Due to its expeditionary prepositioned maritime capabilities, the Marines were in Kuwait prepared for the invasion weeks before the Army was able to marshal sufficient combat power to conduct the mission. Marines relieved the 82d Airborne in Al Anbar, Iraq in early 2004. After being told by the U.S. Army that Al Anbar was a lost cause, they turned the region into a case study of how to execute counter-insurgency doctrine. After restoring security to Al Anbar, it was the Marines who quickly moved into Afghanistan's untamed Helmand province and conducted the majority of the integrated air-ground offensives and high-risk missions.
While maintaining a reinforced Marine Expeditionary Force in Helmand, the Marines simultaneously continued to sustain their seaborne presence, executing missions in Haiti, Lebanon, Libya, and Liberia, among other places. These operations were possible only because of the Marines’ ability to be on-station, maneuvering from the sea, self-sustaining, with integrated aviation, ground forces, logistics, and operational enablers. If the Marine Corps has been a "second land army," it is only because the U.S. Army needed the help to answer the nation’s extraordinary concurrent calls to arms in Iraq and Afghanistan. Simultaneously, the Marine Corps maintained a robust forward deployed, maritime readiness posture.
The Marine Corps is not “actually part of the Navy” and have not been referred to as the “infantry of the Navy” since ships plied the seas under sail power. The Marine Corps is an equal member of the Joint Chiefs and a separate service from the United States Navy. The two services share some budgetary authorities administered by the Department of the Navy, but this does not make the Marines subordinate in any way to the Navy (the service). The only funding that is administered by the U.S. Navy – the service, rather than the Department – is funding for Marine aviation, which is overseen by the Secretary and is not at the beck and call of the Navy service chief.
Francis relies on one biased “expert,” Gordon Adams, without seeking out a true strategic affairs professional who might be able to shed light on the true nature of naval expeditionary operations in the 21st century. Rather than simply recycle Secretary Gates’ missives about the Corps, which, with due respect, were badly misinformed, Francis might have considered the full range of naval expeditionary operations without falling back on “Inchon.” Marines have operated from the sea scores of times since Inchon, including a noteworthy feint during Desert Storm which required Saddam Hussein to commit his operational reserve, making the ground forces envelopment of the Iraqi army possible.
Marines have been responsible for dozens of noncombatant evacuations, humanitarian relief operations in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The rescue of Scott O’Grady in Bosnia? Marines. Securing diplomatic missions worldwide? Marines. Core of the massive humanitarian response to the 2005 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2010 environmental disaster in Japan? Marines. To view naval expeditionary operations through the narrow lens of opposed landings reflects a failure to understand how our integrated, joint military operates. Naval expeditionary forces have a unique ability to loiter in troubled areas of the world for weeks or months at a time, without access to ports or airfields, virtually self-reliant for support, awaiting employment or simply demonstrating American commitment to security.
In the future, Mr. Francis might be well-served to dig deeper than one ill-informed academic when discussing the merits of cashiering the most flexible, lethal, well-trained, and adaptable force in the history of warfare. The Marines will not survive as a service because of nostalgia or political connections. The Marines will prosper because they bring an integrated, flexible, forward-deployed, disciplined and effective set of capabilities to the national security toolbox that cannot be replicated by another service or special operations forces.
