The Feather Merchants: Senior Leaders Subverted the Marine Corps

In the Marine Corps of my father and uncles, the term “Feather Merchant” referred to marines who were considered to be lightweights. These usually were folks who were “in the rear with the gear,” such as clerk-typists and supply types along with staff officers with no front-line combat experience.

The term generally fell out of use during the Vietnam War and the War on Terrorism when marines found other, more colorful ways to describe anyone who wasn’t on the front lines. In many cases, this was unfair. Every marine is trained to be a rifleman. In many emergency situations from WWII to Vietnam, most Feather Merchants used their rifles to devastating effect on Japanese, North Koreans, and Vietnamese Communist forces in emergency situations.

However, there is a new breed of Feather Merchants, those being the three and four star generals who have turned the Marine Corps from the nation’s 9-1-1 force to a China-oriented missile force that has failed the nation’s call three times in the last six years, leaving the other services scrambling to make up for their lack of availability. And the Corps doesn’t even have the missiles to accomplish the new mission yet.

The last commandant told the nation that amphibious operations were obsolete and the Navy could get by with fewer amphibious ships. Consequently he released it from the commitment to maintain enough ships to maintain a 24-7 amphibious presence in the world’s most likely trouble spots (the Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf, and the Western Pacific).