Base Marines ready to go if called

Marines stationed at Cherry Point say they will be ready if called to be part of a troop surge in Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama announced Tuesday night that 30,000 more troops would be in Afghanistan by summer.

Several news services, including The Associated Press and the BBC, reported that the first Marines will be in Afghanistan by Christmas. With Marines on the front line of a U.S. military force that has been fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan since just months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, there is little doubt that some of the additional Marines will come from Cherry Point, headquarters of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing.

“As the nation’s 911 force, the Marine Corps remains prepared to execute any mission assigned by the president and the secretary of defense,” said Maj. Aisha M. Bakkar, director of Cherry Point Joint Public Affairs and Community Relations.

“Marines have a history of success in counterinsurgencies, and we are confident that today’s Marines are well-suited for the strategy being executed in Afghanistan.”

Bakkar said wing staff anticipated the president’s remarks but did not yet have specific orders on how to fill the directives. Possible scenarios include more air involvement, particularly of helicopters.

“Because of our high state of readiness and inherent flexibility, we could have an additional force of nearly 1,000 Marines in Afghanistan in December,” Bakkar said. “They would join about 11,000 Marines already in Afghanistan working as part of the Marine Expeditionary Brigade and as trainers with the Afghan National Security Forces.”

Bakkar anticipated that additional Marines from the area would likely join that brigade in southern Afghanistan.

Many Cherry Point Marines just returned from an 11-month deployment in Iraq. The 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing (forward) from Cherry Point that operated in Iraq deactivated last month.

Although much of the focus has been on Iraq and Afghanistan, a Marine aviation element is also in three Marine Expeditionary Units deployed globally but not in the current theater of war.

“They are ready, prepared and trained to meet whatever the requirement is going to be,” Bakkar said.

Marine Sgt. Lisa Strickland, a base spokeswoman promoted from corporal in November, said she is ready and willing to go.

“That’s what we’re trained for,” she said. “You expect to deploy and many of us want to deploy.”

Strickland has a baby daughter and a Marine husband who just recently returned home.

“Whatever the numbers are, we’re here to serve our country,” she said. “It would be an honor to go.”

But Rep. Walter B. Jones, R-N.C., a ranking member of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee who represents the Cherry Point and Camp Lejeune areas, is less than enthusiastic.

“The war in Afghanistan has now gone on longer than U.S. involvement in World War I and World War II combined,” Jones said in a statement before the president’s speech. “I do not believe we are faced with the false choice between ‘doubling down’ in Afghanistan or pulling out completely and creating a vacuum which might ultimately be filled by America’s enemies.”

“Military experts have testified to Congress that there are a range of policy options between those two extremes that can protect America’s interests in that part of the world, minimize American casualties, and which would do far less to hasten the bankruptcy of the U.S. Federal Treasury,” said Jones, who has responded to each U.S. military casualty in Iraq and Afghanistan with personal letters to their families.

“I cannot support requests for additional troops until President Obama can first lay out a coherent comprehensively revised policy that rationalizes our continued involvement in Afghanistan, makes plans for a clearly defined end-point to that involvement, and gains the support of a majority of the American people,” he said.