U. S. Marine Corps Does Nothing But Prove Its Worth

I had planned at some point in time to write an article expounding on the value and worth of the U. S. Marine Corps to not only the United States, but to the free and civilized world. But lo and behold I was ‘one-upped’ by one of America’s greatest writers who tells the story of how Marine Corps independence sometimes gets in the way of stodgy protocol and draws negatives inferences.

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To stand in the shadow of Victor Davis Hanson is not only humbling but a great honor. It is with those thoughts that I yield to his brilliant superiority as a wordsmith. What follows is an exact replica of his column as it appeared online via National Review Online.

Marinestan

National Review Online Victor Davis Hanson Periodically, the Marines’ way of doing things so bothers our military planners that some higher-ups try to curb their independence. The ten-part HBO series on the Pacific campaign of World War II just ended. That story of island-hopping was mostly about how the old breed of U.S. Marines fought die-hard Japanese infantrymen face to face in places like Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, Guam, and Okinawa. We still argue about whether it was smart to storm those entrenched Japanese positions or whether all those islands were strategically necessary. But no one can question the Marine Corps’s record of defeating the most savage infantrymen of the age, thereby shattering the myth of Japanese military invincibility. Since World War II, the Marines have turned up almost anywhere that America found itself in a jam against supposedly unconquerable enemies — in such bloody places as Inchon and the Chosin Reservoir in Korea, at Hue and Khe Sanh during the Vietnam War, at the two bloody sieges of Fallujah in Iraq, and now in Afghanistan. Over the last two centuries, two truths have emerged about the Marine Corps. One, they defeat the toughest of America’s adversaries under the worst of conditions. And two, periodically their way of doing things — and their eccentric culture of self-regard — so bothers our military planners that some higher-ups try either to curb their independence or to end the Corps altogether. MORE...