The Marines

I think we can all agree that he U.S. Marines are awesome. Surely, I would never have the guts to join.

However, I'm watching a PBS doc about the Marines, and I can't help but think that while Marines are great at being Marines, they're not really great at anything else. The whole thing is about how much Marines mean to other Marines. How touching. Wow, they love each other!! I bet Duran Duran was sad about breaking up too.

Hey, they're very close to each other, that's awesome. I remember Air Force boot camp; after 2 weeks if someone was 50 feet behind you and sneezed, you knew who that person was. That's awesome. That's great.

Of course I wouldn't compare the two boot camps, but I think it's time for us to admit that the Marines are a sort of maritime military welfare. Yeah, Marines love standing around talking about how awesome Marines are, but in the last half-century, what have they done? The last war they won was World War II. Uncommon valor was a common virtue. That's great, but that's almost 70 years ago. Today, if you join the Marines you're basically entering into the very welfare system that you will claim is anti-American.

The Marines were awesome. But when it comes to the Marines today, it's mostly Marines themselves talking about how great Marines are. If we're gonna use these people in real foreign policy decisions, then we have to be adults and realize "maybe this is a different era." Talking about how awesome we are might work in high school cafeterias, but it's not really practical in the world today.