The Case Against the Marine Corps Commandant | The American Spectator

The imminent early retirement of Air Force Chief of Staff General David Allen will leave one more Biden-era leftover military chief to be purged. That is General Eric Smith, the commandant of the Marine Corps. Actually, it is the opinion of many current and former Marines that Smith should have been the first to go.

If forcibly retired, Smith would join Allen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Charles Q. Brown, former Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti, and the ex-Commandant of the Coast Guard Linda Fagan as casualties of the rot that permeated the defense establishment during the Biden era. This list does not include the Chief of Staff of the Army, who has so far flown beneath Hegseth’s radar as the Army has made significant innovative inroads on the China front. (RELATED: The Feather Merchants: Senior Leaders Subverted the Marine Corps)

Brown was too woke, and Allen was accused of not doing enough to counter China in the aerospace area. Franchetti and Fagan were seen as DEI hires not qualified for the job. The indictment against Smith has several counts; all more serious than the other four. (RELATED: Some Generals Should Be Fired. Start With Eric Smith.)

First, he has stubbornly persisted in implementing his predecessor’s poorly conceived and badly executed Force Design strategy which abandoned the Marine Corps’ traditional focus on amphibious warfare and its role as the nation’s world-wide general purpose force in readiness in favor of a China-oriented missile heavy force that duplicates capabilities already exercised by the other services with missiles more capable of accomplishing the mission than what the Corps is buying. (RELATED: Getting the Marine Corps Out of the Chinese Finger Cuffs

Despite mounting evidence that Force Design is logistically unsustainable, is ignored by the Chinese, and is not wanted or needed by the theater commander or by the regional allies, Smith has stubbornly doubled down on it. General David Berger obviously chose Smith over several more competent and qualified general officers because he was a loyal acolyte who had helped Berger circumvent the Marine Corps’ time-tested Combat Development Process (CDP) to implement Berger’s “genius breakthrough.” The CDP was not perfect, but it was designed to prevent really bad ideas, such as Force Design, from becoming reality. (RELATED: The Marine Corps Has Gone Off the Rails)

A second charge is perhaps more serious than the first. In January of this year, General Smith made a false official statement to a group of reporters when he told them that the Marine Corps had never embraced DEI as official policy. (RELATED: Marine Corps Commandant Tells a Whopper)

He did this while his staff was desperately trying to purge its websites of all evidence to the contrary. This either showed poor judgment or abysmal ignorance of the fact that anything that goes out on the Internet stays there forever. Either of which should disqualify him from the office of commandant.

Any public statement by a Marine Corps commandant to the press is, by nature, an official statement. A false official statement is an offense punishable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. If I had been caught making a false official statement while a serving Marine Corps officer, I would have been relieved of my position and subject to an Article 32 hearing (the equivalent of a civilian Grand Jury) and likely hauled before a general court-martial. Smith still sits in the commandant’s chair. Some pigs are more equal than others in Smith’s Marine Corps.

Third, Smith has contributed to the suppression of professional military expression and discussion in the Marine Corps, begun by General Berger, who made it plain that Force Design was a done deal and that honest discussion and criticism were neither wanted nor would be tolerated. On numerous occasions, members of the faculty at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College invited retired senior Marine Corps officers to debate the merits of Force Design. In each case, the sitting president of the Marine Corps University (MCU) cancelled the invitation. In one instance, a former MCU president was told that he lacked the expertise to discuss the topic.

As noted military theorist William Lind has pointed out, a particularly egregious example of the anti-intellectual bent of the Berger/Smith era: Not long ago, a German naval aviator spent some time at the Basic School, the school for all Marine lieutenants.  Because the German officer had a rank above lieutenant, TBS put some lieutenants under him.  He ran his small units German style, according to what maneuver warfare recommends.  The Marine lieutenants loved it.  The German officer was called in by other faculty who said to him, “You are teaching Marines to think.  We don’t want them to think.  We want them just to follow orders.”

Prior to Berger/Smith, the old trope about Marines being dumb was an urban legend. The senior Marine Corps leadership actively encouraged informed professional debate among Marines at all levels. No more.

The current president of MCU actively encourages spying on officers to uncover thinking that he deems inappropriate.

@MarineCorpsU President BGen Matthew Tracy @NavalWarCollege’s Women, Peace & Security conference:

“Allyship: 1) recognize the patriarchy, recognize there’s a system of divergence… who’s the [male] jerk at the🎄party?

2) NEVER check anyone out”

This is 🇺🇸’s war college system pic.twitter.com/Y4THwVtga9

— NOVA Campaigns (@NoVA_Campaigns) January 4, 2025

The fact that this uniformed clown has retained his job says volumes about the current state of what passes for senior Marine Corps leadership. He is so woke that he makes Tim Walz look like Sylvester Stallone.

Finally, Smith is not a well man. After a massive heart attack several years ago, he was allowed to remain on active duty while colonels far more qualified to be general officers have been medically retired. Again, some pigs are more equal than others.

President Trump deserves a defense team that he can trust. Smith is the last of the woke Biden holdovers. Retiring Smith would clear the decks. Unfortunately, the question of a successor is a problem. The active duty three stars are Berger/Smith acolytes and are hopelessly compromised. Bringing a suitable candidate in from the retired list has precedent in General Dan Caine, the current Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman. There are several superb, currently retired candidates. Until Smith is replaced, the stanza of the Marine Corps Hymn about “keeping our honor clean” remains a hollow slogan.

READ MORE from Gary Anderson:

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Gary Anderson is a retired Marine Corps colonel. He was a special advisor to the deputy secretary of defense.