# Does America need to maintain the Marines?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-america-need-to-maintain-the-marines/567306>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [January 12, 2011, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-america-need-to-maintain-the-marines/567306 "2011-01-12T04:11:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 36

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Algher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Algher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Algher)\
**Post date:** [January 12, 2011, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-america-need-to-maintain-the-marines/567306/36 "2011-01-12T20:05:13Z")

</div>

> [@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:

[http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS22451.pdf](http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/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.

---

_[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-america-need-to-maintain-the-marines/567306)._