Surface Navy Association Symposium, 13 January 2011, Remarks by General James F. Amos, Commandant of the Marine Corps. Short excerpt follows:
... These vignettes validate what I see as the mission of the Marine Corps: a balanced air ground logistics team that is forward deployed and forward engaged: shaping, training, deterring and responding to all manner of crises and contingencies.
In every location I just mentioned — Pakistan, Haiti, the Caribbean, the Gulf Coast, South America, Gulf of Aden, Philippines, and Afghanistan — Marine Corps forces were either engaging with our allies, conducting full spectrum COIN operations, enabling the Joint Force and Interagency/NGO elements, providing humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, deterring aggression or contributing to assured access. I refer to our Marine Corps of today as a 'middleweight force'...a term I first introduced in my planning guidance that I issued shortly after becoming the Commandant. We fill the void in our nation's defense for an agile force that is comfortable operating at the high and low ends of the threat spectrum or the more likely ambiguous areas in between.
To Marines, the notion of 'expeditionary' is a state of mind that drives the way we organize our forces, train, and procure equipment. We are our nation's crisis response force. By definition this necessitates a high state of unit readiness and an ability to sustain ourselves logistically. Crisis response is incompatible with tiered readiness. You're either ready to respond to today's crisis...with today's force...TODAY...or you're late...and risk being irrelevant...
Remarks by General James F. Amos at the Surface Navy Association Symposium.