The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture

Identity and Role 79
8. Ibid., 19.
9. Estes, Handbook for Marine NCOs, 72.
10. United States Marine Corps (hereafter USMC), Sustaining the Transformation,
unpaginated introduction.
11. Woulfe, Into the Crucible, 11–12.
12. Dye, Backbone, x.
13. Oral history file AFC 2001/001/46366 MS01, Veterans History Project, American
Folklife Center, Library of Congress.
14. Smith, The Few and the Proud, 174–75.
15. The Gallup question reads: Just off the top of your head, which of the five
branches of the armed forces in this country would you say is the most prestigious
and has the most status in our society today—the Air Force, the Army,
the Marines, the Navy, or the Coast Guard? Polling taken in 2001 indicated
that 36 percent of Americans rated the Marines the most prestigious branch,
with the Air Force coming in second at 32 percent. By 2004 the Marines had
widened this gap considerably, coming in at 39 percent, with the Air Force falling
to 28 percent. This trend has continued over America’s counterinsurgency
years until 2011, when the Army displaced the Air Force for second place,
with the Marine Corps climbing still higher: Air Force 15 percent, Army 22
percent, Marine Corps 46 percent (Navy 8 percent, Coast Guard 2 percent).
Data retrieved November 23, 2012, at http://​www​.gallup​.com​/poll​/148127​
/americans​- army​- marines​- important​- defense​.aspx.
16. O’Connell, Underdogs, 1.
17. USMC, Sustaining the Transformation, 19.
18. Oral history files AFC 2001/001/43420 MS02, AFC 2001/001/72369
MS01, AFC 2001/001/71698 MS02, AFC 2001/001/50169 MS02, and AFC
2001/001/53039 MS01, respectively, Veterans History Project.
19. This is a reference to the 1984 television commercial in which raw steel is
forged into the blade of a Marine officer’s sword, offered as metaphor for the
transformation a young man would undergo through Corps tutelage.
20. Krulak, First to Fight. This book appears on the most highly recommended tier
of the Commandant’s Professional Reading List.
21. A reference to the US emergency phone number, 911—not a reference to the
terrorist event of 9/11.
22. Hoffman, “Marine Mask of War,” 2–3.
23. Capt. Owen O. West, “Who Will Be the First to Fight?” Marine Corps Gazette
(May 2003): 54–56.
24. Col. John A. Lejeune, later commandant of the Marine Corps (1920–29), wrote
with definitive clarity: “Let us not forget that we are, first of all, infantrymen,
and have inherited the glorious traditions of that arm of the service.” Lejeune,
“The Mobile Defense of Advance Bases by the Marine Corps,” Marine Corps
Gazette (March 1916): 18. This theme is represented across multiple Gazette
articles of this era.
25. Millett, Semper Fidelis, 29.