thedrifter
07-26-07, 11:18 AM
New Look Marines
James Brady
Forbes.Com
07.26.07
Media critics ask, and justifiably so, why no one in Washington ever bothered to learn anything about its history, culture and society, or even read some T.E. Lawrence, before we invaded the old Mesopotamia (now Iraq) back in the spring of 2003? Well, someone's finally boning up on the place, not some egghead think tank. But the U.S. Marine Corps.
The popular image of the Marines is pretty much that of guys who run toward the guns, kick butt and get the job done, both in "good" wars like World War II and "lousy" wars like Iraq and Vietnam. Marines are very rarely accused of being the deepest of introspective thinkers.
Perhaps this is condescending and a modern image ought to be crafted.
I was in Quantico recently for a reunion of Marine officers who graduated from the Basic School in 1951--Korean War vintage jarheads. The Basic School, then and now, is where newly commissioned Marine second lieutenants are taught the fundamentals of their trade in a course that lasts six months. It's tough physically, rather demanding mentally and pumps out about 1,700 young officers, men and women, per year to be sent off to the infantry, artillery, tanks, engineering, communications and other specialties, eventually to combat and the wars.
But now there's a new and exciting, and just maybe brilliant, program that's been added to the curriculum of each Basic School class. Ret. Brig. Gen. George Bartlett, a "mustang" from one of those 1951 Basic School classes, told me about it. Bartlett was a sergeant who became an officer and ended up a general, serving in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, and he put me in touch with one of the men who run this Marine Corps' "new look."
They're part of the Marine Corps Training and Education Command, headquartered in a small, nondescript industrial building on a back street in Quantico. I spoke with its deputy director, Barak A. Salmoni, Ph.D.
According to him, the thing began in August 2005, and since then every lieutenant going through the Basic School takes a course called Advanced Operational Cultural Learning. Salmoni says they've divided the world into a number of potential trouble spots, areas "likely to engage in anything short of high-density combat." Young officers are asked to choose three regions of interest to them and then the Marine Corps assigns them a single region or subregion.
And basically from that point on, for the rest of that officer's USMC career, he or she will be required to continue survey studies (and then deeper instruction) about the region, its culture, its languages, its religious factions, its history.
As first lieutenants and young captains, they'll move on through CDs and DVDs to more intense learning about their region. As captains and young majors, the language requirements will be ramped up. And as majors and lieutenant colonels, the language capacity will be tested and taught even more rigorously.
Starting this fall, the program will no longer be limited to officers. Sergeants on re-enlisting will also be assigned a region and will start taking the same instruction as captains and majors. "The idea is that five years down the road," says Dr. Salmoni, "a Marine battalion will have a commanding officer and a gunnery sergeant who've both mastered graduated skills" useful in a given area.
As for the regions involved and their relative interest to the Corps, Salmoni says: "Africa is huge, with subregions of Central Africa, Western Africa, sub-Saharan, Horn of Africa, six or seven regions. Then move on to Western Asia, then South Asia, Southwest Asia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Malaysia, Indonesia, The Philippines. We don't include Japan because everyone there speaks English or we have plenty of people who know Japan.
The program is pretty much Barak Salmoni's "vision," but its head is a retired colonel, Jeffrey Bearor. He and Salmoni "started this thing together." Was Barak a Marine himself? "No, though I grew up at 29 Palms (a California base). But I had glaucoma and the Marines didn't take me, so I took sloppy seconds and got a Ph.D." And where is the budget for all this? "It's included in the general war on terror funding."
Obviously the program is just getting under way and our military is celebrated for red tape and abhorrence of new ideas. "We're building the courses now," says Salmoni. But you wonder: If we already had a military that knew something about the tribal and religious feuds, history, lingo, the Sunni-Shiite hatreds and how nervous the Kurds make neighboring Turkey, maybe our Iraq adventure would not be so screwed up
Ellie
James Brady
Forbes.Com
07.26.07
Media critics ask, and justifiably so, why no one in Washington ever bothered to learn anything about its history, culture and society, or even read some T.E. Lawrence, before we invaded the old Mesopotamia (now Iraq) back in the spring of 2003? Well, someone's finally boning up on the place, not some egghead think tank. But the U.S. Marine Corps.
The popular image of the Marines is pretty much that of guys who run toward the guns, kick butt and get the job done, both in "good" wars like World War II and "lousy" wars like Iraq and Vietnam. Marines are very rarely accused of being the deepest of introspective thinkers.
Perhaps this is condescending and a modern image ought to be crafted.
I was in Quantico recently for a reunion of Marine officers who graduated from the Basic School in 1951--Korean War vintage jarheads. The Basic School, then and now, is where newly commissioned Marine second lieutenants are taught the fundamentals of their trade in a course that lasts six months. It's tough physically, rather demanding mentally and pumps out about 1,700 young officers, men and women, per year to be sent off to the infantry, artillery, tanks, engineering, communications and other specialties, eventually to combat and the wars.
But now there's a new and exciting, and just maybe brilliant, program that's been added to the curriculum of each Basic School class. Ret. Brig. Gen. George Bartlett, a "mustang" from one of those 1951 Basic School classes, told me about it. Bartlett was a sergeant who became an officer and ended up a general, serving in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, and he put me in touch with one of the men who run this Marine Corps' "new look."
They're part of the Marine Corps Training and Education Command, headquartered in a small, nondescript industrial building on a back street in Quantico. I spoke with its deputy director, Barak A. Salmoni, Ph.D.
According to him, the thing began in August 2005, and since then every lieutenant going through the Basic School takes a course called Advanced Operational Cultural Learning. Salmoni says they've divided the world into a number of potential trouble spots, areas "likely to engage in anything short of high-density combat." Young officers are asked to choose three regions of interest to them and then the Marine Corps assigns them a single region or subregion.
And basically from that point on, for the rest of that officer's USMC career, he or she will be required to continue survey studies (and then deeper instruction) about the region, its culture, its languages, its religious factions, its history.
As first lieutenants and young captains, they'll move on through CDs and DVDs to more intense learning about their region. As captains and young majors, the language requirements will be ramped up. And as majors and lieutenant colonels, the language capacity will be tested and taught even more rigorously.
Starting this fall, the program will no longer be limited to officers. Sergeants on re-enlisting will also be assigned a region and will start taking the same instruction as captains and majors. "The idea is that five years down the road," says Dr. Salmoni, "a Marine battalion will have a commanding officer and a gunnery sergeant who've both mastered graduated skills" useful in a given area.
As for the regions involved and their relative interest to the Corps, Salmoni says: "Africa is huge, with subregions of Central Africa, Western Africa, sub-Saharan, Horn of Africa, six or seven regions. Then move on to Western Asia, then South Asia, Southwest Asia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Malaysia, Indonesia, The Philippines. We don't include Japan because everyone there speaks English or we have plenty of people who know Japan.
The program is pretty much Barak Salmoni's "vision," but its head is a retired colonel, Jeffrey Bearor. He and Salmoni "started this thing together." Was Barak a Marine himself? "No, though I grew up at 29 Palms (a California base). But I had glaucoma and the Marines didn't take me, so I took sloppy seconds and got a Ph.D." And where is the budget for all this? "It's included in the general war on terror funding."
Obviously the program is just getting under way and our military is celebrated for red tape and abhorrence of new ideas. "We're building the courses now," says Salmoni. But you wonder: If we already had a military that knew something about the tribal and religious feuds, history, lingo, the Sunni-Shiite hatreds and how nervous the Kurds make neighboring Turkey, maybe our Iraq adventure would not be so screwed up
Ellie