It is obvious that the wagons have been circled! This implies a defensive posture! Good luck with that. The discussion on FD 2030 will continue with or without the Marine Corps Gazette.
Regarding this statement: "How are we to square that statement to one he made earlier in an email to a Chowder II member dated Wednesday, 30 November at 3:49 PM: “Break, break, we [MCA/Gazette] have also started taking heavy fire from HQMC over this [the three articles]”?"
To square the above statement will the Gazette/MCA publicly state in writing that Editor of the Gazette and the Gazette/MCA as a whole believes in candid open debate, is committed to candid open debate, and is independent from any kind of influence from HQMC.
FD 2030 has been under fire from the very beginning by the military blogs and publications (Task and Purpose, Defense.info, Military.com, MCA etc., Chowder II is the just the latest critic. In addition, FD 2030 initiated the calls for the elimination of the Marine Corps (https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/11/12/new-dod-adviser-has-made-controversial-proposal-get-rid-of-marine-corps.html ). The Marine Gazette should be enthusiastic to publish this debate and decent. The Commandant is following a bad Naval strategy. Step one for the Navy and Marine Corps should be to review the "island Chain Defense" strategy and recognize that a "great competition" or war with China will be a global war and not limited to the Pacific. The CCP already has a work around to our strategy and their Malacca Strait Problem. They are building ports, railroads and roads in Myanmar tied into their Belt and Road Initiative. Additional they now have a military base in Dibouti (Bal al Mardab Strait). They have already turned the island chain strategy into a paper Maginot Line. The Gazette should welcome this debate.
It’s unfortunate that there is a concern about identifying the authors. The ideas and words should stand on their own merit, separate from the personalities that wrote them. This approach was the one that was taken when Hamilton, Jay, and Madison used pseudonyms to write the Federalist papers. They each had their own distractors and supporters but the founders wanted to separate their ideas from the person that wrote them. That same approach should be applied in this case as well.
We agree that the focus on names is only an attempt to distract from the real issues. Nonetheless, starting with our articles in a well-known online magazine Monday,12 December readers will start to see our names.
Let’s hope the Editor of the Gazette allows for the open and honest debate about FD 2030 vs FD 2035 to flourish, Marines should never be afraid of someone else’s thinking.
Gazette/MCA should "never be afraid of someone else’s thinking." Otherwise, the Gazette and the MCA are at peril of becoming a political arm of HQMC and agenda influencer for HQMC.
It is obvious that the wagons have been circled! This implies a defensive posture! Good luck with that. The discussion on FD 2030 will continue with or without the Marine Corps Gazette.
Regarding this statement: "How are we to square that statement to one he made earlier in an email to a Chowder II member dated Wednesday, 30 November at 3:49 PM: “Break, break, we [MCA/Gazette] have also started taking heavy fire from HQMC over this [the three articles]”?"
To square the above statement will the Gazette/MCA publicly state in writing that Editor of the Gazette and the Gazette/MCA as a whole believes in candid open debate, is committed to candid open debate, and is independent from any kind of influence from HQMC.
FD 2030 has been under fire from the very beginning by the military blogs and publications (Task and Purpose, Defense.info, Military.com, MCA etc., Chowder II is the just the latest critic. In addition, FD 2030 initiated the calls for the elimination of the Marine Corps (https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/11/12/new-dod-adviser-has-made-controversial-proposal-get-rid-of-marine-corps.html ). The Marine Gazette should be enthusiastic to publish this debate and decent. The Commandant is following a bad Naval strategy. Step one for the Navy and Marine Corps should be to review the "island Chain Defense" strategy and recognize that a "great competition" or war with China will be a global war and not limited to the Pacific. The CCP already has a work around to our strategy and their Malacca Strait Problem. They are building ports, railroads and roads in Myanmar tied into their Belt and Road Initiative. Additional they now have a military base in Dibouti (Bal al Mardab Strait). They have already turned the island chain strategy into a paper Maginot Line. The Gazette should welcome this debate.
It’s unfortunate that there is a concern about identifying the authors. The ideas and words should stand on their own merit, separate from the personalities that wrote them. This approach was the one that was taken when Hamilton, Jay, and Madison used pseudonyms to write the Federalist papers. They each had their own distractors and supporters but the founders wanted to separate their ideas from the person that wrote them. That same approach should be applied in this case as well.
We agree that the focus on names is only an attempt to distract from the real issues. Nonetheless, starting with our articles in a well-known online magazine Monday,12 December readers will start to see our names.
Let’s hope the Editor of the Gazette allows for the open and honest debate about FD 2030 vs FD 2035 to flourish, Marines should never be afraid of someone else’s thinking.
Gazette/MCA should "never be afraid of someone else’s thinking." Otherwise, the Gazette and the MCA are at peril of becoming a political arm of HQMC and agenda influencer for HQMC.