Quote Originally Posted by Doc.
Knowing the marines, and corpsman firsthand gives you a different Idea on how you look at this situation. The army, air force, and Seal units have been getting much better funding than their marine brothers have been. I think its about time for these professionals actually get the cut. The Reconnaisance community, forever has been doing the same job as the other branches, with out the money, the publicity and pull that other units get. I went trough ARS, and let me tell you what. The instructors are phenominal. Down right professionals. This one Captain explained to the studs there that if it were his choice as the XO, he'd have the training expanded to where he could have realtime training With the tools and time to properly train these recon marines. Yet they get the job done in 11 weeks and do a damn good job at it. As time's are now these marines go practically straight to war. fighting along with other socom units. But are not referred to the Socom community. Now all of this happening, is to me a good thing. It means maybe someone will wake up and see how these boys are being starved of the right equipment to do the same job as any other operator, and with a 1/4 of the training. I hope to see more funding come our way. If the Marines that are sour about losing thier 0321's then maybe you should have shown some more respect by giving them the up to date gear, and training that you were sending them down range to do.
So the argument is that since funding was deficient for a segment of the Marine community, it is better to lose it and control over it for good, so that it can be properly funded and employed by non-Marines? It is odd that the only positive argument that can be made for this realignment is increased funding.

For all those who believe that SOCOM is the answer in Small Wars, and that the evidence supports this assertion, I would please ask someone show it to me again. Please do not point to Afghanistan. The ANA and NATO force in Afghanistan have NO freedom of movement, do not control the whole of the country, cannot secure the border, have not been able to kill/capture the top remaining Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, nor disarm the local militias. The Afghan National Army is so poorly funded that it lacks the ability to take the initiative and pursue significant offensive action.