Two Marine Corps
John Galt
by William S. Lind
Since sometime before Caesar was a lance corporal, the United States
Marine Corps' greatest fear has been becoming "a second land army." It
has long believed that if the country perceived it had two armies, it
would require one to go away, and that one would be the Marine Corps.
It is therefore ironic that the United States now finds itself with
not one, but two Marine Corps, and the final result may be that both
disappear.
Almost any Marine knows the two Marine Corps of which I speak. One is
the heir of the maneuver warfare movement of the 1970s and 80s, of Al
Gray and Warfighting, of free play training, officer education focused
on how to think, not what to do, of the belief that the highest goal
of all Marines is winning in combat with the smallest possible losses.
This is the Marine Corps that led the advance to Baghdad in the first
phase of the ongoing war in Iraq. It is also the Marine Corps that
recently "fought smart" in Fallujah by not taking the city.
The other Marine Corps' highest goal is programs, money and
bureaucratic success "inside the Beltway." Its priorities are
absurdities such as the MV-22 "Albatross" and reviving the 1990s "Sea
Worm" project under the label "distributed operations," which are
referred to openly at Quantico as "putting lipstick on a pig." This
Marine Corps is anti-intellectual, sees the First Generation culture
of order as sacred, believes that sufficient rank justifies any idiot
and regards politics, not combat, as the "real world."
Regrettably, in the war between these two Marine Corps, the second one
is winning. I recently encountered a horrifying example of its success
at the Marine Corps Command & Staff School at Quantico. At the end of
this academic year, the Command & Staff faculty simply got rid of 250
copies of Martin van Creveld's superb book, Fighting Power. This book,
which lays out the fundamental difference between the Second
Generation U.S. Army in World War II and the Third Generation
Wehrmacht, is one of the seven books of "the canon," the readings that
take you from the First Generation into the Fourth. It should be
required reading for every Marine Corps and Army officer.
When I asked someone associated with Command & Staff how such a thing
could be done, he replied that the faculty has decided it "doesn't
like" van Creveld. This is similar to a band of Hottentots deciding
they "don't like" Queen Victoria. Martin van Creveld is perhaps the
most perceptive military historian now writing. But in the end, the
books went; future generations of students at Command & Staff won't
have them.
A friend who attended the last Marine Corps General Officers'
conference reported the same division between the two Marine Corps.
The officers from the field, he said, had completely different
concerns from those stationed in Washington. They were ships passing
in the night. But it is the interests of the Washington Marine Corps,
not those in the field, that determine Marine Corps policy. And that
policy is affected little, if at all, by the two wars in which Marines
are now fighting.
Throughout my years as a Senate staffer, the Marine Corps' clout on
Capitol Hill was envied by the other services. The Marine Corps then
had little money and not much interest in programs. Its message to
Congress and to the American public was, "We're not like the other
services. We aren't about money and stuff. We're about war." That
message brought the Corps unrivalled public and political support.
In the mid-1990s, the Marine Corps changed its message and, without
realizing what it was doing, abandoned its successful grand strategy
for survival. The new message became, "We are just like the other
services. We too are now about money and programs." And that new
message is what now dominates Headquarters Marine Corps and Quantico.
Thinking about war is out; money and stuff is in. In effect, the
Marine Corps has sat down at the highest-stakes poker game in the
world, American defense politics, with 25 cents in its pocket. It
simply cannot compete with the Army, Navy or Air Force at buying
Congressional and public support. But it is determined to try.
If the dumb (and increasingly corrupt) "Washington" Marine Corps
finally triumphs over the smart, Warfighting Marine Corps, in the end
both will disappear. And that will be a shame, because the smart
Marine Corps, Al Gray's Marine Corps, really had something going. It
was on its way to becoming the first American Third Generation armed
service.
Maybe Martin van Creveld's next book should be The Rise and Decline of
the United States Marine Corps.
June 5, 2004
William Lind [send him mail] is Director of the Center for Cultural
Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation.
Copyright © 2004 William S. Lind
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