The other night, I was chatting online, and my profession came up. Someone else in the chat mentioned that they were previously in the Army, and I jokingly said that we wouldn't hold it against them and that nobody was perfect. Typical inter-branch ball-busting, the branches rib each other all the time. Call it sibling rivalry. Well, the former soldier then tried to insist that the Army and the Marine Corps are the same, the Marines are just hyped up more.

Ever notice that every time someone tries to say the Marine Corps is no different from the Army it's almost always someone who is or was in the Army? Or at the very least, someone closely related to a soldier. Coincidence? Who knows! Jealousy? Well, duh. Of course the Army wants to be held in the same regard as the Marine Corps. Problem is, they don't want to earn it the way we earned it. I'm afraid it just doesn't work that way.

You see, it's not just that we train harder, fight harder, and hold ourselves to a higher standard of discipline and honor than the Army does. Yes, we fight the same fight, but the Marines fight it better. Call me arrogant if you want to, but it's a fact. We're more effective in combat than the Army is. The history of the Corps is punctuated again and again by battles from which the Army withdrew in defeat, and the Marines in turn went in and destroyed all opposition. Even more numerous are the battles that we should never have won. Belleau Wood, the Chosin Reservoir. The list goes on and on. Situations where the odds seemed impossibly against us, and still we emerged victorious. Battles the experts said couldn't be won, we won. Objectives they said couldn't be achieved, we achieved. We've become so well-known for overcoming impossible odds that it has practically become our sole purpose for existing.

The most recent example was Al Anbar province in Iraq. A few short years ago, the experts said it couldn't be cleared, that it was a lost cause, that the terrorists were too firmly rooted and the province's population too sympathetic with them and defiant of us. They said it was impossible, that it couldn't be done. They said that if we went in, our boys would be slaughtered. And like countless times before, our top commanders listened to these reports, and they answered "Send the Marines."

And so they did. While the Army handled areas like Baghdad and western Iraq - areas previously cleared out and no longer as tumultuous as they once were - the vast majority of the Marines that deployed to Iraq were funneled into Al Anbar province. Today, Al Anbar is as quiet and stable as Baghdad is. (BTW, I'll give you one guess who cleared out the worst parts of Baghdad back in 2003).

If the Army and the Marine Corps are the same, then I say answer me this: In WWII, the Japanese commanders ordered their men (it's on record, you can look it up for yourself) to "avoid engaging the white-sleeves at all costs". In still older wars, similar orders were given by our enemies. "Don't fight the yellow-legs" was the order back in the colonial days. White sleeves? Yellow legs? I'll give you just one guess, bitches. Yep they were talking about the Marines. Parts of our uniforms that distinguished us from the regular Army. So here's the question that I beg you to answer: If we're the same, then why do our enemies have a long history of being perfectly willing to fight America but ordering their soldiers to avoid engaging the Marines wherever possible? Maybe you don't want to see the difference between us but our enemies sure as hell do.

But examples like this aren't the only difference. Soldiers can argue - and plenty of them do - that if they were deployed in the same manner we were which is to say, if they were sent in to all the most dangerous areas like we are they could accomplish the mission same as us, they could perform just as heroically and just as ferociously. Fair enough, it's not my place to say they wouldn't, I don't doubt that most of them are as devoted as we are (though I doubt they're quite as insane). Just because they don't prove it as often as we do doesn't mean they can't fight as hard as we do. But the difference is not simply in our training, our discipline, our honor, our integrity, our leadership, and our tenacity. It's in the way we function, and the true purpose we serve as a branch.

Still, for all you nay-sayers who have deluded yourself into believing the Army is the same as the Corps and can do the job the Corps does, let me set the record straight once and for all. Here is the TRUE difference between the Marine Corps and the Army:

The Marine Corps is designed to be the President's ace in the hole. There are two very important elements that make the Corps stand out from the other branches, and they are as follows: First, with the exception of the massive warships the Navy uses to ferry us around the world, we have everything we need to wage full-scale war on all fronts: Land, air, and sea. We can land a full-scale assault force anywhere in the entire world in less than 48 hours notice, and launch a full-scale offensive ALL BY OURSELVES for up to 6 months, with no support from any of the other branches. And, in fact, that's exactly what the Corps is designed to do, that's our true purpose. Which brings us to the second element: The President of the United States has the authority to deploy the Marine Corps, and only the Marine Corps, in any way he sees fit for up to 6 months without waiting for Congressional approval. Meaning he can send us to do exactly what we were designed to do, on a moment's whim, with no red tape whatsoever.

So, basically, with nothing more than the President's nod, the Marines can bring the fuckin hurt to anyone, anywhere, anytime while the other branches have to wait for Congress to approve the mission before they can come and help. THAT is why we train so hard that is why we fight so ferociously. We are America's kamikaze force. Our missions are suicide, or so they tell us when we leave, only to shake their heads in amazement when we come back. This is why they say that the ones who join the Army are patriotic, while the ones who join the Marines are flat out psychopaths. We have to be ready to go anywhere in the world, and fight anyone at a moment's notice without the other branches to help us. And so we are. It takes a special kind of mentality to do the job we do (most describe that mentality as "crazy").

An excellent example of the difference between the Army and the Marine Corps is when (the legendary) Chesty Puller came to reinforce an Army brigade that was basically getting it's ass kicked. Even with his Marines thrown in the mix, as usual, it looked like there was no way to win. When he arrived the Army commander asked him what the routes of egress would be (in lamens terms, which direction to run when the time came to fall back). General Puller picked up a radio, called his artillery, gave them the coordinates directly behind our forces and said, no shit, "If we fall back an inch, open fire." He then turned to the Army commander and said "Does that answer your question?" We won that battle, btw. If anyone wants me to, I can name plenty more examples of battles where the Army was beaten back, only to have the Marines step in and fuckin clean house.

When the Army says fall back, we say fuck you, kill them all or die trying... and in 233 years, we still haven't died trying. Same as the Army, my ass.

Semper Fi, bitches.