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I can name plenty of occasions of Marines displaying a lack of discipline and bringing dishonor to the Corps. Does that mean the Corps is suffering for some giant institutional problem. This is not a Army only problem but a human one and a reflection of the society that the military draws from. And yes a big part of why the Army is effected more then the Marine Corps is due to both size and scope of missions. If tomorrow the Marines were told they needed to get as large as the Army as well as have as many MOSs they would be facing the exact same problems.
That is your branch pride talking. That is not honesty. But have at it. And when you are finished trying to fit any minor issue into the internationally embarrassing box that the Army constantly provides, you will have come nowhere near the Bergdahls or the Manning or the tactical disasters. I'll help you with two recent issues off the top of my head...
1) Haditha Dam (all Marines found not guilty in civilian court)
2) Pissing on corpses (If only it were thaty simple for the Army, right?)
3) A televised hazing incident with Force Recon in the 1990s.
Let me help out with the other branches. The Navy had that Tailhook issue in the 1990s. Air Force Generals are routinely caught with their hands in the cookie jar in terms of crooked defense contracts (pick a decade).
Your excuse making and dismissals are just more of the same. "Size...other branches have issues too..." Size means that leadership stops? Because of size, soldiers walk around with rusty weapons? Because at what point in this numbers game does the discipline cease to be a complete focus and proper psychological training and assessment stop mattering? The Marines lowered recruiting standards to enlist tens of thousands more, yet.... The Air Force has over 300,000 Active Duty, yet... And because the heat of a light bulb is hot, the heat of the sun can't be measured for its obvious difference? It's a way to deny a very real and obvious problem and one that extends those problems from war to war simply because the Army and its soldiers won't face it. And the rest of us get to be lumped into it because civilians only see a "military" problem.
Further you adding the black hawk down incident as an example of Army poor performance, shows that either you simply have zero actual knowledge of the entire event or that you are simply blinded by your anti Army bias. Not sure which it is.
Don't be so determined to confuse the difference between a hard-fought battle and the Army errors that exacerbated the battle...
- There was no TRAP mission in place for that Somalia mission. Thus, the Army betrayed its own SOPs. (This would be where Clinton shares blame). Even worse is that by 2006 the Army admitted to the absence of TRAP missions in Iraq for years.
- As soon as RPG presence was known, all helicopter activity should have been grounded over the city. Sending more in was an error and exacerbated the need to rescue even more.
As for your typical default to "bias," this would be yet another one of the excuses that allow the Army to look away and continue the problem. Any bias is based on a reality. Did you know that despite the lessons of warfare in Somalia and Bosnia, only the Marines began stressing urban warfare (MOUT) as the future? The Army continued to focus intently on Gulf War scenarios, because it wanted to train for the wars it wanted and not the wars we were likely to get. This is why Jessica Lynch & Co. got caught like they did. Lost, absent rusty weapons, and afraid...they had absolutely no idea what they were doing. The official Army excuse was that they were "support troops" as if that means that it was alright that they were not trained properly and lacked NCO leadership.
Do you see the point at all here? It is not about some silly branch "bias." There is no way you do not see the issue. Pretending that "we all have problems" settles the matter for another war is designed denial. The Army has two choices. Own it and fix it....or just keep denying and cling to the excuses so that the ignorant civilian populace can just keep blaming "military."
One would think that this is a discussion that at least military members can have among themselves since they can see through the civilian haze of lumping it all into "military." But branch pride has you rejecting these truths and in personal denial. Be proud...just don't pretend to be blind.
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