Archive for the 'Marine Corps' Category

For those who follow me on X, up until now I’ve just been insistent that they don’t deploy the Marines unless arming orders are issued.

Call me old fashioned, but personally I’m a big fan of peace officers and the Posse, and when more is needed, the unorganized militia. And shooting horse thieves and home invaders.

The problem with the unorganized militia is that it relies on a legitimate government to call it up, unless it self-mobilizes under its officers. You know there is militia in neighboring states that could mobilize quickly.

We’re here because of illegitimate government, and because America no longer believes in the Posse and the Militia.

Well, they're sporting pump action shotguns. I'd rather have a Benelli M4 or Beretta 1301 but whatever. I do wonder if those pouches have bean bags in them or what? What will they be shooting? Maybe pump action because bean bags won't work so well to cycle gas or inertia guns.

— CaptainsJournal (@BrutusMaximus50) June 10, 2025

The only explanation for allowing this sort of thing to continue is having sympathy for these actions.  Piracy isn’t some sort of movie – it’s reckless endangerment, kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon, and thievery.  The Biblical punishments for these actions is death.  Cutting the heads off of pirates and running them up the flag pole might put an end to piracy right quickly.

However, in spite of the wishes of the founders, we have a standing army for purposes of foreign misadventures, and another standing army (police of all sorts) for purposes of violation of foundational constitutional rights at home. The one thing the federal government is tasked with, i.e., protection of the border, it routinely ignores and even laughs at.

And the one reason for a standing army for foreign wars was piracy.  Jefferson commissioned the U.S. Marines for such things, but rather than sending a couple of MEUs to handle this problems, we would rather send MEUs out on humanitarian missions across the globe.

Black is white, up is down, and darkness is light.

Houthis to world. Our Red Sea maritime interdiction has worked so well that we’ll expand it.https://t.co/oZ4S8JNTcz

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) December 9, 2023

Source.

Ahead of the event, Anime NYC advertised the Marines making an appearance (Booth #373) as “a military partner,” linking to an enlistment form for applicants to connect with a Marines recruiter. (The recruitment application on the official Marines website included the UTM code, “FY23ANIMECON,” in order to track the social media campaign’s performance across platforms.)

According to the exhibitor list, the Army (Booth #367) touted a 360-degree photobooth, oft-used at high school dances and wedding venues; a personalized dogtag-making station; and military “swag” to take home. “Join like-minded Army personnel who share a passion for anime and discover what the Army can offer you. With over 170 career paths, robust education benefits, and exciting job opportunities, the Army is a wide-open frontier to helping you Be All You Can Be!” reads the Anime NYC description.

I would expect that of the Army and the FBI (who was recruiting there too).  That the Marines were there is embarrassing for them.

How shameful.  Even now they cannot understand why good men no longer want to fight and potentially perish for the country.  It is no longer their country.

Marine Corps Times.

Leaders of Marine units can let their service members wear nonstandard uniform items amid a long-term shortage of the regular camouflage uniform.

The Marine Corps says it won’t have a full stock of the woodland-pattern camouflage combat utility uniform ― the everyday outfit for most Marines ― until summer or fall 2024. The shortage has prompted the top Marine leader to authorize unit commanders to allow the desert-colored camouflage combat utility uniform or the flame-resistant organizational gear, known as FROGs.

Ridiculous.  This is because of lack of planning, lack of logistics, lack of vision, lack of foresight, and lack of funding, along with worrying about the wrong things like gender and race studies.

U.S. Army from Glenn Reynolds.

NEGLECTING THE TROOPS: Congress blasts Pentagon for ‘dreadful’ barracks conditions. “In a scathing letter addressed to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, lawmakers accused the Pentagon of failing to ‘provide the most basic oversight and care’ of barracks at 10 installations cited in a recent report and called it a ‘failure of leadership’ by Austin ‘that cannot be ignored.’”

I have a nephew in the Army and have heard a number of stories along these lines — no food, no toilet paper, filthy barracks, etc.

If living quarters – whether barracks or tent – aren’t squared away, that’s the fault of leadership.  If the troops are filthy or live in filthy conditions, there is a lack of discipline.

Either way, there is a general lacking that deeply affects the U.S. military.

And it’s all by design, you understand?

What do you want to bet this lack of discipline doesn’t affect the Mexican cartels or the army of Communist China?

Source.

When the Defense Department surveyed troops in 2021 on their experiences in the workplace regarding gender, the findings revealed significant room for improvement ― particularly in the Marine Corps.

Now, the Corps is bringing on new staff members in the latest effort to address this cultural trend. The service revealed its plans in a briefing presented to the Pentagon’s Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services in March.

Because nothing says “America’s Strike Force” like spending resources and time on ensuring that equal numbers of men and women fight in war.

Honestly, the cancer has gone so deep at this point I highly doubt it can be excised, even by the best surgeon.

From Twitchy.

” … both the AR-15 and M4 contain barrel rifling to make the round tumble upon impact … “

I’m willing to bet you didn’t know that’s the point of rifling, did you?

I am in absolute awe

I was today years old when I was informed, by an “expert” testifying for California’s DOJ, that an AR is an area effect weapon, a single .223 round can sever a human being in half, barrel rifling is what makes a round tumble upon hitting it’s target and… https://t.co/5VZ5vIWN4c pic.twitter.com/Qnl7Qr0uQC

— Bad Weapon Takes (@BadWeaponTakes) February 11, 2023

And not only that, semiautomatic rifles are more effective than fully automatic ones.  Furthermore, it’s “very difficult to use as a defensive weapon, except as a blunt force instrument.”

It can cut a body in half, the semiautomatic version is more dangerous and effective than a machine gun, and it’s no good for a defensive weapon.

No, it’s not just you.  No one else can make sense of this mish-mash either.

At this point it makes no sense to try to decipher this gobbledygook.  But it does go to show just how badly the USMC has screwed up by promoting men like this, either idiots, or traitors, or both.  The USMC should be ashamed, but probably isn’t.

The last vestige of reliable American defensive forces has been infected, corrupted, and turned into a sham and hollow shell.  How sad.

UPDATE: Here is a rebuttal to the nonsense in the opinion of Tucker.

“They blew me off.” It’s not the same MC today as even when my son served in Fallujah.

Hi @USMC. My dad will be 100 yrs old on 2/24. A Marine during WWII. 5 assault landings. We'd love it if a uniformed Marine came for a visit – say "HI" to him. Few WWII Marines are left alive. Sent a message thru the Marine Corp portal.
They blew me off.
Thanks pic.twitter.com/V273AE648O

— Jim Thompson (@JimmySportToons) February 2, 2023

Give the Marines credit for at least citing the cause. Last week here at TCJ, we noted how the Navy gave no reasons for its recruiting and retention problems.

The COVID-19 vaccine mandate is contributing to the military’s recruitment troubles, the top general in the Marine Corps said on Saturday.

Speaking during a panel at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger defended the vaccine mandate as a necessity for keeping the force healthy. But he indicated the mandate has posed problems for recruiting in pockets of the United States where vaccine misinformation is prevalent.

“Where it is having an impact for sure is on recruiting, where in parts of the country there’s still myths and misbeliefs about the back story behind it,” Berger said.

Speaking to reporters at the conference later Saturday afternoon, Berger added that the mandate has posed an issue for recruiting in the South in particular.

“There was not accurate information out early on and it was very politicized and people make decisions and they still have those same beliefs. That’s hard to work your way past really hard to work,” he said in response to a question from Military.com.

“Small areas, big factor,” he added when pressed about how much the mandate has contributed to recruiting issues. “You talk to me in the cafeteria, and one of my first questions is, ‘Do I have to get that vaccine?’ And you go, ‘Yeah, you do.’ Ok, I’ll talk to you later. It’s that fast.”

The military has faced a recruiting crisis over the last year as it tackles the twin difficulties of increasing numbers of Americans unqualified to serve and decreasing numbers of those who are qualified being interested in serving.

One Pentagon study found that only 23% of young Americans would be eligible, pointing primarily to obesity and minor legal infractions related to things like marijuana use as precluding the vast majority from putting on the uniform.

By way of brief followup to my post entitled Things Learned About Modern Warfare From The Ukrainian War, I thought I would roll in the experience of my former Marine son.

It was long held that the USMC is special operations, so they don’t need one.  I have a whole host of thoughts on this claim that would take us very far afield and ruin the main point I want to make.  Besides, readers would get bored and skip out on it.

But sooner or later the MC would capitulate, and Marine Raiders were folded into SOCOM.  When that happened, money flooded in.  They had all sorts of perks that other Marines didn’t have, for example, when my son learned to perform CQB and room clearing, he went to hot shoot houses, all over the country, before his deployment to Iraq.

The SOCOM Marines do too, but before that, they have (onsite at Camp Lejeune) better-than-video-game quality simulations of shoot houses (with physical movement) that could be programmed for whatever situation they wanted to test, and it could be run at any time, night or day, but only for the SOCOM Marines.

Each SOCOM Marine, even when my son was in the Corps, which ended in 2008, had his own cage with equipment.  Literally anything he wanted was in this cage.

When my son visited these cages with a buddy on Camp Lejeune, you know what was found in many of the cages?  Drones, along with controls for them.  They could pick them up at will and carry them on whatever deployment was next.

Drones.  Modern warfare requires them for intel and surveillance.  The losers will not have drones.  The winners will.

Ed Palm.

So much for reasoning the need, but there is a humanly redemptive sense in which I believe we still need the Marine Corps.

I grew up in a single-parent working-class home in a bad neighborhood. I had no prospects for college. I seemed destined for a life of industrial-strength monotony, and the Corps at the time was the only avenue to distinction open to me. The Marines shored up my flagging self-respect and self-confidence, and I’m sure it has done likewise for countless young men, and now women, who have been put down and underestimated by the authority figures in their lives. In the words of the poet, “I took the [road] less traveled by, /And that has made all the difference.”

The difference is that the Marine Corps is not just a branch of the military. The Army has its elite units; the Navy has its SEALS. But the Marine Corps is an elite fraternity (in a genderless sense) with a distinctive sense of esprit de corps.

That fraternal sense is a Marine thing. If you’ve never been a Marine, you may not understand it.

This is a heartfelt tribute to the history of the U.S. Marine Corps and what it has meant to our history, so I hate to say it to Ed, but this comes from another time, another culture, and another world.

My son saw it after Iraq when the Corps wouldn’t allow him to train his “boots” the same way he was trained.  He also observed that they were intentionally attempting to rid the Corps of combat experience.

It didn’t take too long until women were invited to join Marine Corps infantry officer training at Quantico, and then on to integrated men/women training at boot camp.  The U.S. Marine Corps is but a shell of what it once was.

They could have taken a different route.  It would have involved making enlistments five or six years instead of four, raising entrance standards for all Marines, more specialized schools, jettisoning the ridiculous notion of large scale amphibious landings, learning to operate in stealth and with distributed operations in smaller teams, learning and applying different means of ingress and egress, and so on.  In other words, many of the things the Marine Raiders do now, except on a wider scale.

It’s too late.  The DoD relies too heavily on JSOC for that sort of thing, so much so that their operational tempo has caused problems.  You can add to all of this the vaccine mandate, and the entire DoD has been eviscerated.

What Ed Palm remembers is now just a phantom – a ghost.