The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is the biggest threat to the US military.

Chaos is the default position of mankind.  If we head toward the sound of it everywhere we hear it then we will be too winded to fight when it really counts....

First this, via Wikipedia...

 The Responsibility to Protect (R2P or RtoP) is an emerging norm that sovereignty is not a right, but that states must protect their populations from mass atrocity crimes—namely genocide,crimes against humanity, war crimes and ethnic cleansing.^[1][2][3] 

Understand that your current Ambassador to the UN, and National Security Advisor are both proponents of R2P.

Now check out this news, via the Wall Street Journal...

President Barack Obama authorized targeted airstrikes and emergency assistance missions in northern Iraq, saying Thursday the U.S. must act to protect American personnel and prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in the face of advances by violent Islamist militants.

Excuse me but the world has been, is and apparently always will be chaotic with people being threatened, killed, raped, tortured and displaced....with states not acting to protect their populations.

Why act to protect an obscure people but ignoring the slaughter of Christians in the same land?

Why the lie about protecting US personnel?

Why the rush to involve ourselves in another tribal conflict between warring religious factions?

Once again American blood and treasure is being used up in a fruitless conflict with poorly defined goals, to save people that quite honestly just aren't worth the effort.  It is past time to take the training wheels off the entire world and to tell them that we have our own problems.  Help yourselves or die.

The R2P concept is tailor made for continuous war...its PNAC just dressed up and refined to appeal to progressives.

Blast from the past. US Marine Tanks, Guadalcanal, circa 1942

"Grinding through the sands of Guadalcanal, U.S. Marine tanks rumble through palm trees toward the front lines to assist ground forces turn back counter-attacking Japanese."

From the collection of Clifton B. Cates (COLL/3157), United States Marine Corps Archives & Special Collections

OFFICIAL USMC PHOTOGRAPH

IDF's Nahal Brigade in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge (pics).

Exercise Pitch Black 2014 Pics.

Thanks to Kristoffer General for the pics and the Pitch Black vid!

Note:  I still wonder why we're not seeing fully integrated exercises in Australia.  I'm talking USMC, US Army, USAF, USN, Australian Army, RAAF, RAN,Singapore AF, etc..

Exercise Pitch Black 2014 begins

Chinese Amphibious Mobile Assault Gun Vehicle water-ops.

All pics via ECNS.cn

This well deck look as narrow as the old LST's...

25nm minimum launch distance? Not according to the CNO!

Consider this a follow up to LtCol Hall's article.  Below is a tidbit from it that has me punching walls....

From the late 1980s through the expeditionary fighting vehicle’s cancellation in 2011, the Marine Corps sought to replace the AAV family of vehicles with a high water speed, self-deploying tracked amphibian capable of launching from 25 nautical miles (nm) over the horizon. This launch distance was established to protect amphibious ships from burgeoning enemy coastal defenses. This changed, however, in January 2011 during congressional testimony before the House Armed Services Committee when the Chief of Naval Operations declared that improvements in integrated naval fire support and ship defenses would facilitate the launch of self-deploying tracked amphibian vehicles from a distance as close as 12 nm.3 This “new” launch distance was reiterated in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Defense Appropriations in 2012.4

What exactly are we being sold by HQMC?  The CNO has laid the 25nm launch distance lie to waste.

Were we being steered to an aviation centric Marine Corps because of the bias of the Commandant instead of operational necessity?