Stardate 20011209.1104 (On Screen): The US Army is noticing with a bit of embarrassment that when the time came for mass deployment of US troops in Afghanistan, that it was the US Marines who went in and not the Army -- despite the fact that CENTCOM is commanded by Army General Franks. That's because General Franks is doing the job he's supposed to do and using whatever forces make the most sense. (That was why those regional commands were set up; it was a response to the "everybody gets to play" planning which caused the disastrous failure of the mission to relieve the US embassy in Tehran.) I'm not so sure that the Army has cause to be worried here; I can understand their concern about being left out -- though that is largely misplaced given that this war was primarily won by Army special forces operating on the ground in Afghanistan. But the regular Army also wants to know that there's a place for it in potential conflicts and understandably doesn't want to be upstaged by the US Marines.
I don't think it needs to worry. The Marines and Army are not really intended to for the same kinds of operations. The Marines are for rapid deployment and quick confrontations. They're shock troops. The Army is for when the struggle is larger and longer lasting; the Marines are sprinters to the Army's marathoners. The Army does have rapid deployment forces. Three divisions of them, in fact: the 82nd Airborne, the 101st Airmobile and the 10th Mountain divisions. But all three move into combat with less heavy equipment than the Marines do because they all rely on airlift where the Marines rely on sealift. And the 18th corps (those three divisions) can go a lot of places the Marines can't easily reach. Were it necessary to fight in, say, Mongolia then the 18th Airborne Corps would have all the advantages. And the rest of the Army will see plenty of action if we end up fighting in Iraq again. In any case, why would we want the Army to become more like the Marines? We already have a Marine corps. (A very fine one, in fact.) (discuss)
