“On our own Shores” by Mike VonSteuben

Yesterday USNI News published an article entitled “Marines Consulting Outside Experts for Fixes to Recruiting Challenge”. Tucked away in this article is a stunning admission by the Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Eric Smith. Speaking to a conference of Marine and Naval officers about the recruiting nightmare they face, Gen. Smith said this:

“It is just a matter of time before we are once again called to defend our nation and, perhaps, on our own shores.”

Although for most “switched on” individuals this is nothing new, what’s significant about this statement is that it comes from a general officer in the Pentagon.

American military supremacy was an undeniable fact for the last several decades, and we grew comfortable with this reality. Too comfortable. As our foreign policy crumbles before our eyes, along with it goes the security we had here in the homeland. The botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 was the last crushing blow to our international credibility, and now our allies are losing confidence that we will come to their aid.

Our reputation aside, this skepticism from our allies is not unwarranted. It is no longer simply a question of WILL the United States help our allies, now it is a question of CAN we help them. We are so wholly committed to our proxy war in Ukraine that we have depleted critical national weapons stocks to support it. We have taken tanks and stingers away from the Marine Corps, howitzers and APCs from the Army, and recoilless rifles from the Rangers. And according to the contractors who make these weapons, we cannot replenish our stores for two decades.

Combine that with the recruiting crisis our military faces. I won’t dive too far into why, but the military is no longer able to meet its recruiting goals. There is simply a shortage of people able and willing to sign up for military service and the DOD is struggling to find out why. They simply refuse to acknowledge that their own efforts to shift the culture of the military into a bizarre social experiment are the cause of this crisis, and instead of addressing the real issue they lean harder into their “equal opportunity” efforts.

And now, finally, it has reached a point to where even the deep-seated establishment must acknowledge that we are weaker as a nation than we once were. This admission by a general officer is the first time that anyone in the pentagon has publicly acknowledged the possibility that our foreign policy and military posture are weakened to the point where we may not be secure in the homeland. That they know this is not surprising. That they now openly admit it is concerning, because it means that the threat is so real that they cannot afford to hide it.

In light of this reality, it is more important than ever for every American to be prepared to face a foreign military power at home. It is my opinion that the most likely foreign threat to the homeland comes from our southern border. Thousands of unknown individuals cross into our nation every month, and it only takes a small fraction of them to have military training to constitute a very potent fifth-column threat from inside our borders. Additionally, given the recent attacks on our power infrastructure by home-grown communist revolutionaries, it is apparent that the threat is already here.

The best thing you can do right now is get organized with the people around you. Don’t go online looking for new friends, just talk with your neighbors. You may find that a lot of them have the same concerns that you have. Get organized within your community, get training, and stock up food and ammunition while you still can.

As the General said, it’s only a matter of time before we engage the enemy “on our own shores.”