Marching up from coastal Kuwait to Baghdad, and fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq away from any water outside of plastic bottles and showers was unsettling to a Marine Corps afraid of being seen as a second (and redundant) army.
As a result, the Marines embarked on an effort to go back to their amphibious warfare roots (although those roots start from the 1930s and bloomed from 1941 to 1950, practically speaking).
As I concluded in that post:
The Marine Corps can't save itself from budget cutters by focusing on a niche mission that only it sees as valuable. The Marines surely need to regain competency in amphibious warfare. But they need to be ready to do what the nation needs them to do--even if that means fighting next to the Army in a long conventional or unconventional campaign.
The Marines can't afford to just stay long enough for the meet and greet, and then leave the Army to stay for the entire party and the clean up after.
So nice try. Here's what a Pentagon spokesperson said about Army cuts:
Furthermore, no discussion about potential ground maneuver capacity can leave out the Marine Corps, who have augmented the Army in every major conflict this past century. Because the Marine Corps' expeditionary, crisis response, and maritime focus is well suited to strategic priorities, this budget protected the planned end strength of 182,000 for the Marines.
Huh. I believe I've said much the same thing many times here.
Heck, I said it in print while advocating for complementary roles in Army-Marine Corps campaigns ashore.
Face it, since World War II, the Marine Corps has been the most significant "allied" ground force to fight at the Army's side in another country.
And no, retreating further from what the Army does into the realm of being a Net Fairy Corps is not the route to salvation.
The Marines can change any way they like. But as long as they look like Army troops and shoot bullets down range at bad guys, they will be ordered to support a smaller Army when our leadership decides to send in the ground power.
The Marine Corps should remember that they will go to war with the Army we have and not avoid it with the Army the Marines wish we had.
