re: #645 Walter L. Newton

Gates did NOT say he wanted to do away with the USMC.

Period.

You are correct, but there’s just cause for concern. I went looking for this quote from SECDEF Louis Johnson, and found it embedded in a speech given last year by DEPSECDEF Gordon England:

Back in December, 1949, with the atomic bomb in mind, Louis Johnson, then Secretary of Defense, wrote to one senior admiral, “Admiral, the Navy is on its way out … There’s no reason for having a Navy or Marine Corps. General Bradley tells me amphibious landings are a thing of the past.

We’ll never have any more amphibious landings. That does away with the Marine Corps. And the Air Force can do anything the Navy can nowadays, so that does away with the Navy.” I might mention that history records that SECDEF Johnson was not fondly regarded by the military, especially the Navy Department!

About a year later, the Navy and Marines would be making a strategically important amphibious assault at Inchon.

Gates is not Johnson—Johnson was a boob, and Gates is not. Still, it’s not wrong to perk up at a statement like that and wonder how far down that road we’re about to go.