[AmericanSpectator] Incompetent leaders misled the Marine Corps into ‘force design.’ It badly needs to return to conventional combat power.
However, there is a new breed of Feather Merchants, those being the three and four star generals who have turned the Marine Corps from the nation’s 9-1-1 force to a China-oriented missile force that has failed the nation’s call three times in the last six years, leaving the other services scrambling to make up for their lack of availability. And the Corps doesn’t even have the missiles to accomplish the new mission yet.
The last commandant
…General David H. Berger (2019-2023)…
told the nation that amphibious operations were obsolete and the Navy could get by with fewer amphibious ships. Consequently he released it from the commitment to maintain enough ships to maintain a 24-7 amphibious presence in the world’s most likely trouble spots (the Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf, and the Western Pacific).
Now, the current commandant
…General Eric M. Smith (since 2023)…
says we need more big deck amphibs to maintain the 24-7 commitment; but he enthusiastically supported the last guy’s position when he was the Assistant Commandant. When asked how many amphibious ships the Marine Corps’ current Assistant Commandant could not come up with a number.
The senior marine leaders have now admitted that they cannot logistically support the new anti-China force — that they call Force Design — due to Navy procurement failures in contracting the new small amphibious ships needed to support the concept. After six years not a single keel has been laid even though the Marine Corps gave up much of its conventional combat power to create the new concept called “Force Design.”
Worse still, none of the nations in the region (with the exception of the Philippines) have agreed to host the anti-China force; and they will not allow their territory to be used in the defense of Taiwan, which is the most likely regional conflict. In addition, the missiles that the Marine Corps is buying to implement the concept are sub-sonic and likely obsolete against current Chinese technology. The question that should be asked of the current senior Marine Corps leadership is, “can’t anyone here play this game?”
There is a deeper moral question here, and that is one of integrity. There is ample evidence that the war games that “validated” the Force Design concept were manipulated to get the “right” answers that the the commandant at the time wanted. This whole idea was his and was supported by some handpicked sycophants.
The current commandant blatantly lied to a group of Pentagon reporters when he told them on January 15th that the Marine Corps had never bought in to DEI, while his staff was trying to expunge the record of that collusion. Apparently, the line in the Marine Corps Hymn that talks about “keeping our honor clean” escaped these two characters.
The rank and file of the Marine Corps is still made up of superb warriors, but the current senior leadership consists of careerist flunkies and is seriously in need of an enema; but who will perform the procedure?
It would be easy to totally blame the Biden administration for the current state of the Corps, as most of the damage occurred on Biden’s watch, but the current administration and Congress seem equally clueless and uninterested. This is probably because most former marine veteran congressmen were relatively junior and were taught to regard their senior leaders as infallible; this includes Vice President Vance. Their loyalty has been betrayed. The current state of Headquarters Marine Corps more resembles the pre-reformation Vatican than the leadership of a competent military organization.
There are many competent and combat tested senior leaders in the Corps that were forcibly retired for objecting to the situation that the organization is currently in. President Trump wisely brought a general officer out of retirement to head the Joint Chiefs. The Marine Corps badly needs the same treatment. Get rid of the Feather Merchants and restore the honesty and usefulness of one of America’s great institutions.
[IsraelTimes] Rev. Johnnie Moore, executive chairman of controversial new GHF, tells The Times of Israel that safety and order will improve, blames Hamas for violence and disinformation
Rev. Johnnie Moore is a believer, in more ways than one.
The 41-year-old clergyman was one of US President Donald Trump ...Never got invited to a P.Diddy party... ’s early Evangelical backers, a man whose deep faith has brought him to refugee camps in Africa and to palaces of Middle Eastern leaders.
He also believes that the humanitarian aid initiative that he runs in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... as executive chairman is the antidote to a fundamentally flawed humanitarian system that has caused human suffering well beyond the war-torn Strip.
"I’m a Christian," Moore told The Times of Israel on Friday. "I can’t think of anything more Christian than feeding people. I happen to also believe that a broken aid system has only prolonged suffering not just in the Gaza, but all over the world."
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation started distributing aid on May 26, following a nearly three-month Israeli blockade amid a war that has already seen shortages that have plunged Gaza into a humanitarian crisis.
The secretive group has touted its delivery of 52 million meals since its launch, but this has been marred by reports of near-daily shootings of Paleostinians who trekked long distances while crossing IDF lines to reach the small number of GHF distribution sites.
I can’t think of anything more Christian than feeding people.
The effort runs counter to the mainstream aid community, which argues that the organization is unable to meet needs in Gaza and allows Israel to use aid as a weapon by determining who can receive it. Critics, including much of the international community, have also accused the GHF of putting aid seekers in harm’s way by placing the distribution centers in IDF-controlled zones and requiring Gazooks to walk long distances in order to reach them.
On Tuesday, more than 165 major international charities and non-governmental organizations, including Oxfam, Save the Children, and Amnesty, called for an immediate end to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
Responding to the aid groups, GHF called on them to join their operations.
"Instead of bickering and throwing insults from the sidelines, we would welcome other humanitarian groups to join us and feed the people in Gaza," the statement said. "We are ready to collaborate and help them get their aid to people in need. At the end of the day, the Paleostinian people need to be fed."
Moore said the mainstream aid groups cling to "a commitment to the existing system almost with fundamentalism... actually prolonging this conflict and causing more suffering to the Gaza people."
An official working for an international organization providing aid to Gaza told The Times of Israel that "those working to provide aid are almost always guided by morally good intentions. But good intentions don’t guarantee good outcomes."
The aid effort in Gaza reflects a closed culture shaped by moral tribalism, where participation and loyalty to group values are prized above critical evaluation, even when the consequences are harmful.
"Humanitarians cannot assume that providing aid in war is universally good," explained the official, granted anonymity in order to speak openly. "Aid can be manipulated by bad actors, and upholding core humanitarian principles like neutrality isn’t always possible, or even ethical. Speaking and thinking critically about aid in any context, including the war in Gaza, shouldn’t be taboo. It’s accountability."
The aid official concurred with Moore that "the aid effort in Gaza reflects a closed culture shaped by moral tribalism, where participation and loyalty to group values are prized above critical evaluation, even when the consequences are harmful."
The GHF has also come under criticism for near-daily reports of lethal violence against civilians traveling to aid centers or waiting for them to open.
Last week, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said at least 549 people had been killed and 4,000 had been wounded trying to pick up aid from GHF sites or while waiting for UN food trucks since the GHF launched.
The numbers have not been verified, but between May 27 and June 24, there were at least 19 IDF shooting incidents related to humanitarian aid distribution, according to a review of reports out of Gaza conducted by The Times of Israel.
“Palestinians in Gaza face an impossible choice: starve or risk being shot while trying desperately to reach food to feed their families,” the international aid groups said in their joint news release on Tuesday.
On Monday, the IDF admitted in a statement that it has killed several civilians near aid sites in recent weeks and said it has learned lessons that will help it avoid similar incidents in the future.
Moore said that when there are incidents, he can pick up the phone and call the IDF, which investigates. “The difference between the IDF and Hamas is Hamas lies about everything all the time.”
He blamed Hamas for “intentionally killing people in order to disincentivize them from accessing aid or to further their disinformation campaign that our free food distribution sites are somehow traps.”
The difference between the IDF and Hamas is Hamas lies about everything all the time.
“We’re not denying that there haven’t been tragic incidents in the Gaza Strip of people seeking aid, and they’ve been harmed,” Moore continued. “We just don’t know what’s true and what isn’t true. What we do know is what has and has not happened in our sites. There hasn’t been violence in our sites. There hasn’t been violence in proximity to our sites that we’ve heard or that we’ve witnessed. What we do witness every single day is some arbitrary, I believe, arbitrary number that comes from Hamas that’s reported by the press because somehow Hamas has decided it.”
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
