Does America need to maintain the Marines?

[Algher]

@Mr.Excellent

That sounds like a pretty horrifyingly bad idea. If there’s one thing military history teaches us - from Rome straight through to the Gulf wars - it’s that training matters. You can have all the nice equipment you want, you can have all the warm bodies you might wish - but if your forces aren’t well-trained, they’ll be picked apart by any force that is. I don’t mean to rag on the Reserves, but their level of training probably isn’t as high as that of regular Army forces that are practicing or preparing for combat 24/7.

Possibly, but history also shows us that when you have a large military sitting around, someone goes looking for a way to use them. The REAL opposition to the current wars started kicking in when Reservists and Guard members started getting killed.

We are already heavily using those part-time forces (one weekend a month and two weeks per year!) in Iraq and Afghanistan.

See the .pdf below for some quick data:

RS22451.pdf

Between September 2001 and November 30, 2007, a total of 254,894 National Guard, 202,113 Reserves, and 1,193,234 Active Component personnel have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan

Table 3. Reserve and Active Component Forces in Iraq

Reserve Component 18,137
National Guard 11,545
Army National Guard 10,583
Air National Guard 962
Reserves 6,592
Army Reserve 4,222
Air Force Reserve 676
Navy Reserve 653
Marine Reserve 1,041

Active Component 137,709
Army 100,307
Air Force 11,388
Navy 3,902
Marines 22,112
Source: Data from Department of Defense, Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Legislative
Affairs, January 2, 2008.

Table 4. Reserve and Active Component Forces in Afghanistan

Reserve Component 5,667
National Guard 3,971
Army National Guard 3,284
Air National Guard 687
Reserves 1,696
Army Reserve 1,369
Air Force Reserve 205
Navy Reserve 120
Marine Reserve 2

Active Component 20,945
Army 15,728
Air Force 3,828
Navy 934
Marines 455
Source: Data from Department of Defense, Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Legislative
Affairs, January 2, 2008.