GOOD IDEA

Us too.

U.S. Marines need more training in peacekeeping in order to keep up with the missions they will face in the future, said the Corps’ top enlisted man.

“We’ll have to focus for the future and spend a little more time training our Marines in those areas,” Sgt. Maj. John Estrada, the 15th sergeant major of the Marine Corps, said during a recent interview.

While the quick-to-deploy 2,000-man Marine Expeditionary Units receive some peacekeeping training, even that is not nearly enough, he said...

Peacekeeping missions could very well be close on the Corps’ horizon, a point of view echoed recently by Lt. Gen. James Conway, who led the Marine contingent during the Iraq war.

“You’re right in that Marines don’t normally do this type of thing, but I think we all recognize that the Army is being fairly well stretched now with all the other requirements that it has, so it would not be an inordinate request, I would not think,” Conway, commanding general of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said during a Sept. 9 Pentagon briefing.

The Corps did not have a formal peacekeeping doctrine when Marines of the I MEF began rebuilding missions in southern Iraq. That should change, the two leaders separately said.