Compass Points - Tribes?
There is only one Marine Corps
Compass Points - Tribes?
There is only one Marine Corps
May 23, 2025
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The Marine Corps Association hold dinners and luncheons to honor and inform the entire Marine community.
Here is a partial list of some of the upcoming events.
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May 29 @ 17:30 - 21:00
2025 MCA Information Awards Dinner
Hilton Alexandria Mark Center 5000 Seminary Road, Alexandria
June 25 @ 17:00 - 19:00
2025 MCA Ammo Tech Awards Dinner
The Clubs At Quantico 3017 Russell Rd, Quantico, VA, United States
July 10 @ 18:00 - 21:00
2025 MCA M&RA Awards Dinner
Hilton Alexandria Mark Center 5000 Seminary Road, Alexandria
August 7 @ 18:00 - 21:00
2025 MCA Training and Education Awards Dinner
Hilton Alexandria Mark Center 5000 Seminary Road, Alexandria
August 21 @ 18:00 - 21:00
2025 MCA Combat Development Dinner & Expeditionary Warfare Excellence Awards Ceremony
The Clubs At Quantico 3017 Russell Rd, Quantico, VA, United States
September 11 @ 18:15 - 21:00
2025 MCA Okinawa Professional Dinner
Camp Butler Officers Club 79-4 Tamagami, Chatan-chō, Nakagami-gun, Okinawa-ken, Japan
September 13 @ 17:30 - 21:00
2025 MCA Iwakuni Professional Dinner
Club Iwakuni Club Iwakuni Bldg. 600, Japan
September 18 @ 18:00 - 21:00
2025 MCA Acquisition Awards Dinner
The Clubs At Quantico 3017 Russell Rd, Quantico, VA, United States
October 9 @ 17:30 - 20:30
2025 MCA Camp Lejeune Professional Dinner
Marston Pavilion Seth Williams Blvd, Camp Lejeune, NC, United States
October 23 @ 17:30 - 21:00
2025 MCA Stuttgart Professional Dinner
Swabian Events Center Patch Barracks, Bldg. 2505, Germany
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The Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Eric Smith, took time to attend the recent MCA Ground Awards dinner and deliver some remarks. In only his third sentence that evening, the Commandant started a series of comments that were at best puzzling and at worst destructive of the Marine Corps he is supposed to be leading.
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ARLINGTON, Va. --Trish and I are honored to be with you tonight—especially for this one. This is not just another awards dinner.
This is our tribe. And it’s good to be home with family.
-- MCA Ground Awards Dinner - May 21, 2025
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Our tribe? Perhaps the Commandant intended the words to be lighthearted and jovial, but the words, "this is our tribe" coming from the Commandant are destructive to what makes the Marine Corps special. The Air Force, Army, and Navy have a multitude of very separate communities. In the Navy, the submarine community is so separate most sailors, no matter how long their careers, will never even meet a submariner.
In the Marine Corps it is not supposed to be like that. In the Marine Corps there is one title, Marine. A Marine for a time may be a recruiter, an SRB clerk, a computer tech, or a lawyer but every Marine is trained and ready to pick up a weapon and take that hill. The distinctions among Marines do not matter. What matters is a Marine is a Marine.
The Commandant begins his talk by saying the Ground Awards dinner is 'not just another awards dinner' and thereby insults and devalues the other dinners for Intell, Manpower, Acquisitions, Combat Development, and many others. Marines who are not infantry are apparently not part of the favored tribe. For many years, it was this very point that made the Marine Corps refuse to provide Marines for assignment to special operations command. The senior leadership of the Marine Corps did not want to allow the creation of different types of Marines. A Marine is a Marine.
Talking about 'tribes' is not the only strange thing the Commandant said. For example,
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Right now, more than 33,000 Marines are forward deployed or forward stationed—deterring aggression, reassuring allies, and preparing for the next fight. We have two MEFs abreast in the Indo-Pacific—I MEF and III MEF.
III MEF training with the Japanese and others across the First Island Chain—while I MEF operates just to the south, shoulder-to-shoulder with allies, pushing capability forward from Australia to the Philippines.
-- MCA Ground Awards Dinner - May 21, 2025
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The Commandant says, "two MEFs abreast in the Indo-Pacific—I MEF and III MEF" but that is not true in any genuine sense. A Marine Expeditionary Force is supposed to be the reservoir of combat power for the Marine Corps. The smaller MAGTFs like MEBs and MEUs are drawn from the much larger MEFs. In the Pacific in Japan the Marine Corps has established the headquarters of III MEF. It is supposed to have 40,000 warfighting Marines. The Commandant has often called III MEF the Corps' force that is ready to 'fight now.' Fight now? Fight with what? The ground combat element of III MEF is the 3d Marine Division. The Marine Corps is required by law to maintain no less than three full active duty combined arms divisions along with all the necessary units for air, support, and logistics.
Today, the 3d Marine Division is an infantry division only in theory. It has been stripped of its infantry and artillery regiments. With the combined arms capabilities of 3d Marine Divisions stripped away, that means the III MEF itself is without significant combined arms infantry. How can III MEF serve as one of the Marine Corps reservoirs of combined arms combat power when it has virtually no combat power? It was Marines from Japan that help save Korea back in 1950. If Korea calls for help from the Marines in Japan today, the Marines would have no help to give.
If the Marine Corps had a full combined arms MEF in Japan, just a few miles off the coast of the Philippines, the Marine Corps would not have to bring in Marines from California. It is amazing the Commandant can speak of the infantry being his 'tribe' when he has done so much damage to Marine Corps infantry. From his days as the assistant commandant, Smith has been a cheerleader for Force Design and a leader of all the ensuing damage to the Marine Corps' armor, air, artillery, infantry, engineering, snipers and more.
A final example of CMC's puzzling words at the Ground Awards dinner. He said, "Now let me speak plainly about Force Design. We are not “transforming” the Marine Corps. That’s not what this is."
What a strange thing to say, Force Design is not about 'transformation'? The original Marine Corps publication, Force Design 2030, begins with a quotation. Is it a quotation from a Marine warfighter? Perhaps a few words from Chesty Puller or Dan Daly? No, Force Design 2030 starts with a quote from Harvard professor John Kotter: “Transformation is a process, not an event.”
Force Design 2030 goes on to make clear it is all about transformation:
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As a consequence, we must transform our traditional models for organizing, training, and equipping the force to meet new desired ends . . . .
. . . we must divest certain existing capabilities and capacities to free resources for essential new capabilities. The most logical way to approach divestment is to take a systems perspective and reduce infantry battalions while proportionally reducing the organizations dedicated to supporting these battalions – direct support artillery, ground mobility assets, assault support aviation, light attack aviation, and combat service support capabilities
-- Force Design 2030 p.2
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The Marine General who claims to be a special tribe member of the infantry has spent the last 6 years helping to degrade and destroy the combined arms units, equipment, and capabilities needed for worldwide crisis response. And now, in a revelation, he says crisis response is the Marine Corps' North Star. North Star? More like fallen star. The Marine Corps has stripped its own crisis response capabilities over the last several years in a misguided effort to place Marine missile units on islands off the coast of China. After all these years and all the damage to Marine crisis response, there are still no operational missile units off the coast of China.
It is time for the senior leadership of the Marine Corps to stop talking about tribes and start talking about the entire Marine Corps uniting together to restore and enhance what the Nation needs today: the upgraded Marine Corps' global 9-1-1 crisis response force.
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Marines - 05/21/2025
Marine Corps Association Ground Awards Dinner
Every time we think we have heard the last and worst from the 39th CMC, he comes through again, with one more comment or statement that is more incredible than the last. We can for a while longer give the SecDef and SecNav some “time” to digest this FD2030 mess, which gives a little more time for this Commandant to stay in the oldest standing structure in Washington DC. Tick tock tick tock the world moves faster than the SecNav. Perhaps very unintentionally these comments degrade the meaning of Memorial Day, which ought be a somber day of remembrance of our fallen comrades in arms. Semper Fi to the fallen.
One careless speech could start to undo what generations of Marine Corps leaders have worked hard to instill; avoid all adjectives in front of the title Marine. I'm a Marine! That is all that needs to be said. When asked by someone I meet what my Marine Corps rank was I simply say, "Marine." Asked what was my MOS, I say Marine Infantryman, not Infantry Marine. Daily our current senior leaders demonstrate they were never properly schooled on the Corps' history and traditions (or perhaps they didn't listen). And too many officers in conversations give evidence that they are not operationally competent. I pray for better days.