Look at it form the perspective of special operations command. It is a joint thing and the Marines don’t like to play with others all that often. And they especially would hate to have an Air Force guy in charge of them. There is however, a huge pot of money with socom. If you’ve ever talked with SEALs, it is ridiculous the amount of supply they get. Essentially, they go on a huge shopping spree at REI to get whatever they need. On the other side, when a married Marine E-4 needs a new set of cammies, the family goes hungry that week.
The snipers/recon/force work for Marine commanders, and hence are not part of SOCOM, that is why you probably hear that they are not “special.” There have been a few articles in the Gazette the past few months about it. There are arguments for and against having Marines work with socom, supposedly it has been tried in the past, but didn’t work out for some reason.
I don’t remember everything, but from the side of a young hard charger, “Fuk, Yeah, where can I sign up.” While the opposing side is that it has the potential to be a career-limiting move. One of those things where if you make it into the community, your infantry brothers suddenly feel that they don’t have the biggest penis any more and try to keep you down...just my take on the articles I read.
