Not Happy

Marine Commandant Not Happy About Border “Emergency”

KEVIN DRUM

General Robert Neller, the head of the Marine Corps, is not happy with his commander-in-chief:

The commandant of the Marines has warned the Pentagon that deployments to the southwest border and funding transfers under the president’s emergency declaration, among other unexpected demands, have posed “unacceptable risk to Marine Corps combat readiness and solvency.”

….Neller, a four-star general, said because of the problems, Marines will not participate in planned training exercises in Indonesia, Scotland and Mongolia, and will reduce their participation in joint exercises with Australia and South Korea. Marines “rely on the hard, realistic training” of the training exercises “to develop the individual and collective skills necessary to prepare for high-end combat,” Neller said.

Military folks are notorious for complaining that reducing their budgets by so much as a dime will be a readiness catastrophe. So I guess I’d take this with a grain of salt. Still, it’s yet another sign that the Pentagon is justifiably unhappy about committing both funds and manpower to what they know is a fake national emergency on the border with Mexico.