[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 160 (Thursday, November 13, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12523-S12524]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    THE MARINE CORPS' 222D BIRTHDAY

  Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, Monday, November 10, was the 222d birthday 
of the U.S. Marine Corps. That day is celebrated by marines, and former 
marines, wherever they are, wherever they may go.
  Last year, on the Marine Corps birthday, I was on a plane with our 
minority leader and several other Senators, on a trip to the Far East. 
We were on our way to visit Ho Chi Minh City, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. We 
had just left Japan, and I was sitting there with my wife, Annie, when 
I remembered that it was the Marine Corps birthday. Because it is a 
ritual for marines to celebrate their birthday, no matter where they 
are, I told Annie that I was going back to the galley to get something 
to be our Marine Corps birthday cake. I know this may sound silly to 
some people, but to marines, it does not sound silly at all.
  So, right as I was getting ready to head back to the galley, other 
people on the flight started gathering around where we were sitting. It 
turned out that they also had remembered how important this day was to 
me, and my fellow marines. Not only did they know what the 10th of 
November was, they had brought a cake along with them. It was a 
beautiful cake and was decorated with the Marine Corps emblem. So 
probably like a lot of other isolated marines in the world, we had our 
own party. It was a very memorable celebration.

  This year I had the chance to participate in the Marine Corps 
birthday ball here in Washington, at the Marine Barracks. Once again, 
we had a wonderful celebration.
  The corps remains proud of the role it has played in the history of 
our country--as the 911 force, the emergency force that is always 
available when requirements dictate that the most best is needed now.
  The Marine Corps remains unique to the other services, in the respect 
that it has all elements of supporting arms in one unit. It has 
supplies for 60 days of combat. It has infantry, air, armor, and 
artillery. It has all the elements wrapped up in one unit, necessary to 
go in and be a very tough, hard-hitting organization for a short period 
of time.
  This was vividly illustrated in the Persian Gulf during Desert Storm. 
The Marine Corps came in with two divisions, completely equipped, and 
set up a blocking position, to give our other forces time to build up--
a build up that over a several-month period came to number over 520,000 
Americans.
  This was typical of the role that the U.S. Marine Corps has played as 
the ready force. And there isn't a Marine unit in existence that does 
not have some of its expeditionary gear, some of its combat equipment 
boxed and ready to go now and move within hours. If the Marine Corps 
ever loses that kind of readiness, I believe it will have lost its 
reason for being.
  So in their 222d year of existence, the marines continue to celebrate 
the traditions of the Marine Corps. They honor and remember the 
sacrifices of marines who fought in places like Belleau Wood, 
Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Bougainville, Iwo Jima, Pork Chop Hill and the 
Chosen Reservoir, and Khe Sanh.
  One thing that has remained the same though out the Marines history, 
and something that I am proud of, is in the way in that the Marine 
Corps recruits people. The Marine Corps recruits people to serve. They 
do not recruit on a promise of ``Here's what is good for you, or here's 
what you'll get out of it yourself'', they recruit by asking the 
question, ``Are you good enough to serve your country?'' And it is 
here, and later where they are trained, that the attitudes required to 
prepare them for battle, are instilled. It calls for each person to 
devote themselves to a purpose bigger than themselves, a purpose to 
each other, a purpose to the unit, a purpose to the corps, and a 
purpose to this country of ours.
  This was well spelled out in a Parade magazine article last Sunday, 
November 9. This article said so much about the training that is going 
on in the Marine Corps today, training that continues to be updated 
from one war to the next.
  This article was not written by some Marine Corps public relations 
person, it was written by Thomas E. Ricks, a writer for the Wall Street 
Journal. Mr Ricks starts out in the first part of this article by 
saying, ``What is it about the Marine Corps that makes it so successful 
in transforming teenage boys and girls into responsible, confident men 
and women? He goes on to show how ordinary ``Beavises and Butt-heads'' 
can be molded into effective leaders. And he says of himself, ``I 
majored in English literature at Yale, and, like everybody with whom I 
grew up and went to school with, I have no military experience. Yet I 
learned things at Parris Island that fascinated me.''
  He talks about ``Lessons From Parris Island'' that are instilled into 
these young people coming into the Marine Corps which are--first, 
``Tell the truth;'' second, ``Do your best, no matter how trivial the 
task;'' third, ``Choose the difficult right over the easy wrong;'' 
fourth, ``Look out for the group before you look out for yourself;'' 
fifth, ``Don't whine or make excuses;'' and, sixth, ``Judge others by 
their actions and not their race.''
  By my way of thinking, those are some pretty good objectives for 
anybody in our society to follow. And they are the building blocks that 
are instilled in all U.S. Marines as they go through boot camp.
  Mr. President, I will not read this whole article this morning. I ask 
unanimous consent that this article be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

[[Page S12524]]

                           A Few Good Truths

                          (By Thomas E. Ricks)


                      what we can learn from them

       On a hot night in 1992, on my first deployment as a 
     Pentagon reporter, I went on patrol in Mogadishu, Somalia, 
     with a squad of Marines led by a 22-year-old corporal. Red 
     and green tracer bullets cut arcs across the dark sky. It was 
     a confusing and difficult time. Yet the corporal led the 
     patrol with a confidence that was contagious.
       Ever since that night, I had wanted to see how the Marine 
     Corps turns teenage Americans into self-confident leaders. At 
     a time when the nation seems distrustful of its teenage 
     males--when young black men especially, and wrongly, are 
     figures of fear for many--the military is different. It isn't 
     just that it has done a better job than the larger society in 
     dealing with drug abuse and racial tension--even though that 
     is true. It also seems to be doing a better job of teaching 
     teenagers the right away to live than does, say, the average 
     American high school. And it thrives while drawing most of 
     its personnel from the bottom half of our society, the half 
     that isn't surfing the information superhighway.
       I wanted to see how the Marines could turn an 
     undereducated, cynical teenager into that young soldier, who, 
     on his second night in Africa, could lead a file of men 
     through the dark and dangerous city. How could a kid we would 
     not trust to run the copier by himself back in my office in 
     Washington become the squad leader addressing questions that 
     could alter national policy: Do I shoot at this threatening 
     mob in a Third World city? Do I fire when a local police 
     officer points his weapon in my direction? If I am performing 
     a limited peacekeeping mission, do I stop a rape when it 
     occurs 50 yards in front of my position?
       To find out how the Marines give young Americans the values 
     and self-confidence to make those decisions, I decided to go 
     to Marine boot camp. I went not as a recruit but as an 
     observer. I come from the post-draft generation. I majored in 
     English literature at Yale, and, like everybody with whom I 
     grew up and went to school, I have no military experience. 
     Yet I learned things at Parris Island that fascinated me--and 
     should interest anyone who cares about where our youth are 
     going. In a society that seems to have trouble transmitting 
     healthy values, the Marines stand out as a successful 
     institution that unabashedly teaches those values to the 
     Beavises and Butt-heads of America.
       I met Platoon 3086 on a foggy late winter night in 1995 
     when its bus arrived on Parris Island, S.C. I followed the 
     recruits intermittently for their 11 weeks on the island, 
     then during their first two years in the Marine Corps.
       The recruits arrived steeped in the popular American 
     culture of consumerism and individualism. To a surprising 
     degree, before joining the Corps, they had been living part-
     time lives--working part-time, going to community college 
     part-time (and getting lousy grades) and staying dazed on 
     drugs and alcohol part-time. When they arrived on Parris 
     Island, all that was taken away from them. They were stripped 
     of the usual distractions, from television and music to cars 
     and candy. They even lost the right to refer to themselves as 
     ``I'' or ``me.'' When one confused recruit did so during the 
     first week of boot camp, Sgt. Darren Carey, the platoon's 
     ``heavy hat'' disciplinarian, stomped his foot on the cement 
     floor and shouted, ``You got on the wrong bus, cause there 
     ain't no I, me, my's or I's here!''
       On Parris Island, for every waking moment during the next 
     11 weeks, they were immersed in a new, very different world. 
     For the first time in their lives, many encountered absolute 
     standards: Tell the truth. Don't give up. Don't whine. Look 
     out for the group before you look out for yourself. Always do 
     your best--even if you are just mopping the floor, you owe it 
     to yourself and your comrades to strive to be the best mopper 
     at this moment in the Corps. Judge others by their actions, 
     not their words or their race.
       The drill instructors weren't interested in excuses. Every 
     day, they transmitted the lesson taught centuries ago by the 
     ancient Greek, philosophers: Don't pursue happiness; pursue 
     excellence. Make a habit of that, and you can have a 
     fulfilling life.
       These aren't complex ideas, but to persuade a cynical 
     teenager to follow them, they must be painstakingly pursued 
     every day--lived as well as preached. I have seen few people 
     work as hard as did Platoon 3086's drill instructors in the 
     first few weeks they led the platoon. Sergeant Carey, an 
     intense young reconnaissance specialist from Long Island, 
     routinely put in 17 hours a day, six and half days a week. 
     His ability to drive himself at full speed all day long awed 
     and inspired his charges. Recruit Paul Bourassa said of his 
     drill instructor. ``When you're gone 16 hours, and you're 
     wiped out, and you see him motoring, you say to yourself, 
     `I've go to tap into whatever he has.' ''
       Sergeant Carey clearly wasn't doing it for the money. He 
     was paid $1775 a month--a figure that worked out to about the 
     minimum wage. Of course, the wages were nearly irrelevant. 
     The recruits learned that money isn't the measure of a man, 
     that a person's real wealth is in his character. One of the 
     funniest moments I saw in boot camp came when Sergeant Carey 
     was lecturing the platoon on the importance of knowledge.
       ``Knowledge is what?'' he bellowed.
       ``Power, sir,'' responded the platoon.
       ``Power is what?'' he then asked.
       That puzzled the platoon. Faces scrunched up in thought. 
     Eventually one recruit hazarded a guess: ``Money?''
       Sergenat Carey was dumbfounded to find such a civilian 
     attitude persisting is his platoon. ``No!'' he shouted. 
     ``Power is VICTORY!'' (Then, in a whispered aside, he added, 
     ``I swear, I'm dealing with aliens.'')
       The drill instructors didn't try to make their recruits 
     happy. They tried to push the members of the platoon harder 
     than they'd ever been pushed, to make them go beyond their 
     own self-imposed limits. Nearly all the members of the 
     platoon cried at one time or another. Yet by the end of 11 
     weeks almost all had been transformed by the experience--and 
     were more fulfilled than they had ever been. They had 
     subordinated their needs to those of the group, yet almost 
     all emerged with a stronger sense of self. They 
     unembarrassedly used words like ``integrity.''
       I learned more than I expected. One of my favorite moments 
     came when Sergeant Carey ordered a white supremacist from 
     Alabama to share a tent in the woods with a black gang member 
     from Washington, D.C. The drill instructor's message to the 
     recruits was clear: If you two are going to be in the Marine 
     Corps, you are going to have to learn to live with each 
     other. Recruits Jonathan Prish and Earnest Winston Jr. became 
     friends during that bivouac. ``We stuck up for each other 
     after that,'' Prish said.
       The recruits generally seemed to find race relations less 
     of an issue at boot camp than in the neighborhoods they'd 
     left behind. If America were more like the Marines, argued 
     Luis Polanco-Medina, a recruit from New Jersey, ``there would 
     be less crime, less racial tension among people, because 
     Marine Corps discipline is also about brotherhood.''
       Two other things surprised me. I didn't hear a lot of 
     profanity. Once notoriously foul-mouthed, today's drill 
     instructors generally are forbidden to use obscenities. Also, 
     I saw very little brutality. ``I expected it to be tougher,'' 
     said recruit Edward Linsky, in a typical comment as he sat on 
     his footlocker.
       Platoon 3086 graduated into the Marine Corps in May 1995 
     and became part of a family that includes 174,000 active-duty 
     members and 2.1 million veterans (there really is no such 
     thing as an ``ex-Marine''). Over the last two years, members 
     of the platoon have experienced some disappointments. But as 
     Paul Bourassa concluded a year after graduating from boot 
     camp, ``It pretty much is a band of brothers.''
       What I think the Marine Corps represents is counterculture, 
     but the Marines are rebels with a cause. With their emphasis 
     on honor, courage and commitment, they offer a powerful 
     alternative to the loneliness and distrust that seem so 
     widespread, especially among our youth.
       Any American--young or old, pro- or anti-military--can 
     learn something from today's Corps. That goes for the 
     corporation as well as the individual. Just listen to Maj. 
     Stephen Davis describe his approach to leadership: 
     ``Concentrate on doing a single task as simply as you can, 
     execute it flawlessly, take care of your people and go 
     home.'' Those steps offer an efficient way to run any 
     organization.
       I took away a lot from boot camp myself. I don't talk to my 
     own kids like a drill instructor (and neither do thoughtful 
     drill instructors). But I was struck by the importance of the 
     example the DIs provided: Kids want values, but they are 
     rightly suspicious of talk without action. So while you need 
     to talk to kids about values, your words will be meaningless 
     unless you live them as well. Also, of all the things that 
     can motivate people, the pursuit of excellence is one of the 
     most effective--and one of the least used in our society.
       None of this is a revelation. Lots of families live by 
     these standards. But few of our public institutions seem to. 
     ``You'd see the drill instructors teach kids who barely made 
     it through high school that they weren't stupid that they 
     could do things if they had the right can-do attitude,'' 
     summarized Charles Lees of Platoon 3086. ``It was all the 
     things you should learn growing up but, for some reason, 
     society de-emphasizes.''
       The white supremacist and the black gang member who were 
     thrown together in boot camp both went on to happy careers in 
     the Corps. Earnest Winston Jr., the D.C. gangbanger, became a 
     specialist in the recovery of aircraft making emergency 
     landings and was posted to Japan. ``It's beautiful,'' he told 
     me. ``Not a lot of people on my block get to go places like 
     these.'' His friend Jonathan Prish, the Alabaman, became a 
     guard near the American Embassy in London, Prish had his 
     racist tattoos covered. ``I've left all that behind,'' he 
     said. ``You go out and see the world, and you see there are 
     cool people in all colors.''
                                                                    ____


                       Lessons From Parris Island

       Tell the truth.
       Do your best, no matter how trivial the task.
       Choose the difficult right over the easy wrong.
       Look out for the group before you look out for yourself.
       Don't whine or make excuses.
       Judge others by their actions not their race.




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