2-Front War Will Overstretch Corps

By Kimberly Johnson
Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Feb 2, 2008 15:00:01 EST
Courtesy Of The MarineCorpsTimes

The Marine Corps cannot endure a long-term presence in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the service’s top officer said.

Service commitments in Iraq have stretched Marines’ deployment-to-dwell-time ratio to about equal time, a metric Commandant Gen. James Conway has long said he wants to improve to take on more expeditionary training and increase Marines’ time with families.

“We cannot sustain 1-to-1 forever, and our Corps is not big enough to do both,” he told reporters in Washington on Feb. 1.

“We can’t have one foot in Afghanistan and one foot in Iraq. I believe that would be — an analogy would be having one foot in the canoe and one foot on the bank. You can’t be there long.”

The strains from Iraq commitments are creating effects on the careers of Marines, he said.

“We are not doing that kind of multi-capable training that we historically do in order to be that swing force and arguably the first to fight,” Conway said.

The impact is also felt by individual Marines, he said.

“We now have a generation of men and women who do not have a complete understanding of what expeditionary is,” Conway said.

“That people now believe that three square meals a day courtesy of KBR and a cot is expeditionary, that is just not true in most of the environments where we would expect to find ourselves in the early going of a contingency.”

The Corps will deploy 3,200 Marines to Afghanistan this spring as part of a “surge” offensive, marking its first large-scale deployment to the country since 2004.

The troop buildup is expected to last through October, Conway said.

“If there is a determination to send more Marines to Afghanistan, I would certainly be respectfully requesting that we reduce our presence in Iraq beyond the 1-to-1 to get us to a more likable ratio that our troops and their families can live with,” Conway said.

The Corps has “in recent days” finalized the missions for the Afghanistan deployments of Camp Lejeune, N.C.-based 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit and Twentynine Palms, Calif.-based 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, he said.

“The MEU will not hold ground, but they will have a tremendous reactionary capability in the south and in the east and where the commander may see a need for a rapid employment of forces,” he said. The battalion will hold onto terrain and work closely with the Afghan army and police forces.

“The point that we have made in the discussions is that we can’t continue to do it without relief elsewhere,” he said. “We take one for the team through October. Beyond that, I’d like some consideration.”