Remember the attack on Camp Bastion/Leatherneck?
A Marine Fighter Attack Squadron was rendered combat ineffective and lives were lost.
Now compare and contrast that with the incident in Las Vegas where about 8 Marines were killed.
The difference?
Commanders were held responsible within weeks. Careers were dramatically altered. Lives changed. Accountability confirmed.
We have none of that in the Camp Leatherneck attack. We don't even have a good after action report (at least one that is publicly available).
Jones, Conway, Krulak, Grey and other greats would have had someones ass in the sling for such an event.
And you wonder why I think the Marines are adrift?
The press turned the squadron commander into a hero because he died in the attack. That's the long and the short of it. We saw it time and time aging throughout the 90's when idiot GI's got themselves captured by our opponents for doing something stupid (think Gulf War I, Bosnia, China) and the press turned them into hero's making it hard if not impossible to courts marshal their stupid asses. Same deal here.
ReplyDeleteWho is in charge base security?
ReplyDeleteIf it was the Sqdn Cmdr than you may have a point.
If not, then someone out there still needs to be held accountable.
it was a convuluted security agreement and that's why i tend to believe Marine83 on this. it was a British Base with USMC occupying half of it, the RAF Regiment was in charge of perimeter security with grunts from an infantry battalion augmenting them.
Deletebut i'm talking about the USMC. in this instance i don't give a damn about the brits except for the fact that the RAF Reg was bragging about repulsing the attack when we saw US Marines actively engaged in the fighting on the tarmac against these guys.
'it’s thought that the British Airmen used some 10,000 rounds.' + an Apache finished the job ,who ever it was fighting did a lot of shooting 10K rounds spent on 10 guys
ReplyDelete