 Welcome everyone. I'm Sergeant Main with Marines TV. Joining me today is Commandant of the Marine Corps, General James Amos. Today he's asked to field your questions from social media about the reawakening. Shall we get started, sir? Go ahead. All right. I just have an intro question. You're the first Commandant that's had to deal with the new media age where social media is at its peak and with that it's it's a challenging environment for for everyone to just kind of navigate through. Why was it that you wanted to pull questions from social media specifically to answer today? I think it's, you know, I've just I've been in the job for a little over three years and and Sergeant Major and I travel around a lot. We get feedback, we ask questions, but but under a kind of veil of anonymity, you probably get a little bit more frank questions. I mean you get some strange ones and and I think you get some disrespectful ones, but but I think for the most part what you get is you get some frank, honest questions that that a Marine might not otherwise ask in a group setting. So that's really why it isn't and, you know, I'm comfortable where I am right now is the Commandant. So I just wanted to get some feedback. I think the social network is the right way to go. The next one is also a first is you're the first aviator that's ever taken the role of Commandant and with being the first non-inventory Commandant, I'm sure it's come with some criticism like from Joseph Seville's here who says how, without a ground combat record, do you expect to lead, you know, a Marine Corps and a reawakening? For all 238 and a half years of our Corps' existence, the ground combat, the infantry battalions, have been the centerpiece. It's the centerpiece of what we do. We reach and sometimes and and pull out pieces of it and attach it like we do now and around the world, but it's the centerpiece and everything else evolves around that. The aviation does and you've mentioned I'm an aviator. I've grown up in aviation. I've flown for 44 years and I'm very proud of that, but we're all a piece of of the Marine Corps. We're all a piece of the synergistic efforts to support the ground combat element and the logistics, the aviation, are all part of it. We brought aviation in and I think it was about the early part of 1900 and it became a part of it. Then we put the A in the MAGTF, Marine Air Ground Task Force. So I'm pretty proud of what we've been able to do as a team. I don't look at myself where I am anymore as an aviator. I look at myself. I'm you know, I'm fortunate and I've got great experiences as an aviator. But I look at myself as a Marine officer and we fundamentally all go back to how it all began for us. We're all evermarines or riflemen and I can give you hundreds of examples of where logisticians, aviation mechanics, aviation ordinance marines fought alongside of our infantry forces or fought their way up the highways on our way to Baghdad or around you know, Marjah and Sangen and the aviators were and the aviation guys were all part of that. So I think we just need to remember evermarines or riflemen number one and and number two I think the synergy of the MAGTF makes us makes us who we are. The last thing I tell you is is that I think all my Logistician ground marines and my infantry ground marines that we flew when I was a commanding general of the 3rd Marine aircraft line and we crossed the border in Iraq and we had 400 airplanes and 15,000 planes flying day and night under some pretty tough conditions. I think they would all reach back and say hey, thank God we had aviation over the head of us. Thank God they were able to kill the targets before we got to them or keep the enemy at bay. So we're a team and it's not either or now. We do all what we do today as team. Portions of the reawakening to some has come across as kind of a group punishment approach to bettering the core. Here we have Levingston Hodges asks why push a campaign when the problems it deals with maybe deals with only 2% of the marines messing up? Well, I think a couple of thoughts on that is it's good for all of us to go back to again those core principles of discipline, adherence to instructions, 24 hour a day, 7 day a week, engage, concern, leadership and those strict obedience doors. Those are the fundamental principles that again have carried us through the wheat fields at Bella Wood and all the great victories we've had. So it's good for all of us as an institution to do that and that includes the other 98%. But certain major bear and I have been clear that the thing that really began to worry us as an institution was the 2%. So that 2%, whereas it might be just 2%, but they have significant impacts. There are people that are judging our institution. They're judging the other 98% of the Marine Corps by the behavior of 2%. So what we want to do is we want to change the behavior of the 2% and we can do that. We can do that and I'm not talking punitively. I'm talking about just NCL leadership. We can reach out and say, hey, we don't do that in this unit in my Marine Corps or you know, we don't do that. I'm sorry. We need to change your behavior. And so that's really what it's all about. So it is 2%, 98% of a part of the center part of the fabric is nice and strong. But you can't overlook the impact that some of the misbehavior incidents 2% have done. I mean, they've been pretty significant and brought shame. I mean, that's a key point. You know, our institution is pretty proud. None of us want to bring shame on the Marine to the left or the right or a unit. Some of these pieces of misbehavior and incidents have brought shame on the Corps and I think we need to face it. There's two sides to every story and I feel like, you know, when Marines go to the PX, the side of the story they see is on the front page of the Marine Corps Times. And a lot of times, they don't know anything different from that. So what would you say to allegations that you tried to ban the Marine Corps Times from PX's and such? Yeah, I'll tell you what. Sorry, I mean, thanks for the opportunity to clear that up for all Marines out there. There was never any attention to ban the Marine Corps Times from the PX, period, none. You know, I'm probably not the first combatant that's been frustrated with the way the Marine Corps Times has information and how they put it out and how they write their stories. And I'm probably not going to be the last. But I want to be clear to all Marines, there was never any tent, nor will the Marine Corps Times be banned from the Marine Corps Exchanges. What's the Marine Corps doing to try and keep the best and most qualified NCOs in? And on the other hand, not let the unqualified NCOs slip through the cracks and stay in? Well, you know, we started three years ago, and this really was a feedback we got from the sergeants major out in the fleet. Before I took this job, I sent some teams out all across the Marine Corps to talk to the senior leadership of both the Colonel Commanders and Lieutenant Colonel Commanders and their sergeants major and ask a couple of questions. One of which is, what are we doing that we need to stop? And the other one is, what is it we're not doing that we should? And one of the feedback was, hey, we need to be more selective in the re-enlistment side. So we came up with a tiered system and a tier one, two, and three. So I'll tell you today that we're sitting, we're probably 85% already complete with re-enlistment opportunities for this year. And we're not even halfway through the fiscal year. So there's plenty of Marines that want to stay. The clear majority of those Marines are tier one and tier two Marines. So we're not having problems keeping the best Marines. As we draw the Marine Corps down, we sit at 193,000 a day, somewhere like that. We're on our way down to, maybe hopefully 182 as a result of the Secretary of Defense's budget rollout this week, but we're on our way down. And when you do that, the opportunity to re-enlist becomes more competitive. So we're being very, very selective on those that re-enlist. And I'm absolutely confident, so I mean that we're keeping the best NCOs we got. I don't think there's, if somebody that's subpar slips through, then shame on the leadership of that Marines unit because they're the ones that are the five micron filter that help determine whether this is a quality Marine, the tier one or tier two. And downsizing rolls right into the next question. We're reawakening and downsizing at the same time. And Marines expect a lot of changes and don't really know where they're seeing them. Are there any changes you can highlight in Lance Corporal's day-to-day that he might see and what can he expect in the next couple years with the downsizing and reawakening? Well, I think, you know, we're all, first of all, the force structure, we have not, we're the only service today, the only one that hasn't done what they call a reduction in force. All the services have been coming down. The Army, excuse me, the Navy and the Air Force have been coming down almost steadily since 9-11. The Army's on its way down from its high, just as we hit our high of 202,000. So, but we're the only service that has elected to not do a wholesale what they call a reduction in force, a RIF, where you just say, okay, I'm going to get rid of 10,000 Marines. So, so you put the notice out and in 60 days, all these Marines are now off duty. We don't do that. And the reason we didn't do that was, was a fundamental principle we've kept all along is keeping faith with our Marines. And I consider, if I have the opportunity to find the money to pay for them to stay on active duty to complete their enlistment, I consider that to be keeping faith. So, so the first thing is, at this point, the way the budget is, I think we're going to be okay with that philosophy. So, Marines will be able to complete their enlistment. They'll compete for reenlistment, just as I just got done talking about. So, I don't think you're going to see any changes there. And as the Corps gets smaller, we'll have fewer numbers of units, not a lot, but we'll have fewer numbers of squadrons and battalions and those kinds of units. But they'll be fully manned, they'll be fully equipped, and they'll be highly trained. So, my sense is, if you are one of those Tier 1, Tier 2 Marines, and you stay, or you're a young Lance Corporal that has just come in the Marine Corps in the last year and a half, I don't think you'll notice any changes. I think you'll look around and it'll be exactly the same as it was last year, last month, because the changes are, you know, we'll be rolling the colors on some of our units, in other words, retiring the colors as the unit stands down. If you're in that unit and you'll probably get assigned to another unit. So, you may see some of that, but the unit you check in to will be fully manned, fully equipped, and fully trained already to go. And the one thing I'll tell you that they're going to see is they're going to see a greater opportunity to deploy overseas. And there are going to be places like Djibouti, when we put the Special Purpose MEC, when they fly through there, they're going to be in Moron, Spain, they're going to be doing business with the Marine Corps in the Pacific, Guam, Okinawa, Philippines, Australia. There's going to be plenty of opportunity for Marines to deploy. That will probably be more in the Pacific than the Marines have seen in a long time. I think it's exciting. After a decade of war, we've seen a lot of service members from every service suffer from PTSD and suicide, including our Corps. And some viewers are under the impression that if they highlight their problems, that they'll be punished rather than led to help or counseling. Matt O'Conn wonders, why not get to the root of the mental issues such as depression and chronic anger caused by high stress and combat deployments? What is your plan to combat suicide, sir? The idea that or kind of the implication that it's a sign of weakness or it's almost not recognized as a real problem is simply not true. There was a period of time, probably around right after OIF-1 and as we went back in in OIF-2, there was kind of an attitude, it's our institution. We're kind of a blood and guts institution and it's just suck it up and deal with it. You know, put some mud on it, you're going to be okay. But after we've deployed a little less than half a million Marines into and out of Iraq and Afghanistan. And the reality of what we've seen is this thing called post-traumatic stress, TBI, the effects of all that is real. I mean, we've got, I've got Colonel Commanding Officers right now that are in command that suffered as a result of TBI and PTS and all that they saw. They suffered for several years trying to get their light back together again and they have. So the clear majority of Marines, there's plenty of stress in just day-to-day business of being a United States Marine. Then you throw combat on top of that and all the things that happen in a combat environment. So it's real. The majority of Marines are able to compartmentalize and kind of deal with that. There is a percentage that just need help getting through that and that's what we're here for. And we take it, we take it very seriously. We've been working on it when I was the Assistant Commander. There is no, what we found is there's not a salve, there's not a pill, there's not some kind of singular treatment that will take care of something like depression or post-traumatic stress that you're dealing with, sleep, anxieties, you know, anxiety attacks. But there's a series of things that you can do that will synergistically begin to help or might. And what we do through our medical departments, and I'll tell you what, I mean, we've spared no amount of money both in the Army, the Air Force, and the Navy to try to, in research, try to figure this out. I think we're working about as hard as we can. But the point I'd like to make before I conclude here is this is real. I've known Marines, I've had Marines that I've grown up with that have suffered through this thing and shame on any leader of any rank that looks at a young Marine or an old Marine that's suffering through this thing and basically kind of turns his back on it because it's real and they need help. And there is help available. It may take a while to find a figure, okay, what's the right alchemy to help this Marine? How much of this kind of treatment, that kind of treatment, this kind of counseling or whatever? But it's there. And we take it seriously and we'll spare no expense to help a Marine. So if I'm struggling with alcohol, maybe I've drank more than I'm supposed to, maybe I've gotten a little rowdy and people around me are starting to notice. And I go to my staff in CO and I say, you know, I'm an alcoholic and I do things that, you know, maybe are unbecoming at the moment, but I would like to get help and fix that. If I open up to my staff in CO like that, is, I mean, can I expect to be punished? Oh, absolutely not. Absolutely not. In fact, I mean, I'd be gravely disappointed if one of my staff in COs or even one of my young officers punished a Marine like that. You know, we see incidents that have gone too far in a Marine's kind of debilitation of with alcohol use to the point where all of a sudden there was an accident. So if I had a Marine that came forward and said, hey, I need help. And they came to me, Staff Sergeant Amos, and they said, hey, staff, I need help with this problem. Well, I'll tell you what, there would be, there's no punishment involved in this thing. And I would hope that it would be handled exactly the right way and it would handle much earlier. You know, you think about it, this matter of alcohol and that kind of abuse, it's not just a problem for the Marine Corps, it's really a problem for society. And society can deal with this stuff. And we can too. The last thing I want to do is lose a Marine. I don't want to lose his life or her life. I don't want to have something bad happen to him. If we can turn this early on, that's exactly it. And then we get the Marine's career back on track. And that's exactly what we want to do. I think this also goes with things like just having issues at home. I'm going to point to, for instance, suicidal thoughts. It could be alcohol. It could be dealing with the post-traumatic stress and all the symptoms. I can't sleep. I'm having headaches. I'm angry. I've got anger issues. I'm paranoid. I can't leave my house. The only way that the Marine's going to get help with that is if we've got the wise and discerning non-commissioned officer that pays really close attention, or a staff NCO, or a young officer, or the Marine himself or herself comes for it. And when that happens, then the floodgates will open up for help. And shame on anybody that wears our cloth and doesn't reach out and help a Marine. Some of the other misunderstandings we get is that some of the things or decisions that are made are completely your idea or you're doing. And you have full control over things like women in inventory or women in service and what MOS's they can go to. But that's not the reality. Can you clarify just kind of how that came about? Yeah. You know, it's actually a pretty important point. Most of what happens is embedded in law and founded in law. And all the efforts that have been underway really for about the last year and a half in all the services have been founded in the National Defense Authorization Act. For two years in a row, it's become law. We've been directed by the Secretary of Defense to, in general terms, and he told all the service chiefs and the service secretaries, you will, by January of 2016, you will open up all MOS's and all units across all the services to females, period. And if you, if for some reason you can't do that or it's not in the best interest of the unit or the combat readiness or the security of our nation, then we have to go back to the Secretary of Defense, or in my case, to the Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of Defense, and then convince them why that's the case. And in that case, we would get an exemption. So it's clear that this is, or it's important for everybody to understand that this is actual law. And there's no force from the face of the earth that obeys laws more than the United States Marines do. We not only obey and we enforce them. So that's a good question and a good point. Not all that comes out is just happenstance. Most of it is often being dictated by Congress. We have some, some, our females that are graduating, our female Marines are graduating from ITB. And they're part of our experimental, we're building this database right now. We're collecting information that we heretofore have not had. So we've opened up most of our MOSs. There are still some that are still closed. But what we've done over the last, really the last year is build a series of kind of physical tests and those kinds of things for those closed MOSs to make a determination if we open those MOSs up. And we're going to allow our females to compete. And you know, one thing I'll tell you right now is that my job is, I've got many jobs as the commentator on the Marine Corps. Probably the most significant one, besides winning America's battles, which we do, is to provide every Marine an opportunity to, to reach his or her peak. In other words, be able to compete, be able to reach her or his or her full capacity. So that's an important part of being a leader. So in that light, we've taken a look at these MOSs and these units that have heretofore been closed. And we've even ordered to do this. This is, this is law. So we don't want to lose sight of that. But we're taking a look at that now. And we've got, we've developed the standards, the physical standards for those to make sure that we understand what a Marine, if you're going to be a tanker, you're going to be an artillery Marine. What does it physically require? And not just so much even in the entry stages, but what's the sustained requirement over, say a tour as an infantryman or, or a Amtrak or a tanker. And so we've developed that now. We're, we've already tested it on a, on a sample of male and female Marines. We've got a pretty good idea of what that is. So now we're applying those into kind of the next phase of this thing, where we're going to take that and make a determination. Are there some of those MOSs and units that we can open up now? And if we did, how would we best set them up for success? You know, our females don't join. First of all, no Marine joins the Corps to be a failure. It's just not in our nature. We don't recruit them that way. We don't, we don't raise them up that way. We all graduate from boot camp. We all do the same things. We're all called United States Marines. We've got the patch on our left breast pocket to prove it. So nobody sets up to fail. But so as we move forward, it's incumbent that we set the conditions for our females to have the greatest opportunity to succeed. That's the difference. That's a different perspective. We're not going at it. Okay, we're going to, we're going to look for opportunities to keep our females out, because that's not the case. I'm going to look for opportunities to set the conditions so that they can succeed. So that those that come in are physically strong enough to be able to do the business of whatever MOS or whatever unit they're in. That's an important difference. And that's key to the success of the Corps. And quite honestly, my family Marines, as I travel around and I, you know, I talked to them all the time. And I ask them, you know, just confirm to me, you don't want the Marine Corps to lower its standards for this MOS or this unit or whatever. And the answer is resounding, no, I've not had a not once have I had a single female Marine say, Oh, come on, if you just lower the standards and we can get in that unit. So so the first, that's the next point I'd like to make is that we're not going to lower standards. And I want all Marines everywhere to understand that we are America's premier fighting force. When when the Klaxon sounds, and they say send in the Marines, we're going to be ready and we better be ready. Because the first time we fail, then America, you know, quite honestly, probably doesn't need a Marine Corps anymore. What's what's not a done deal yet is is the matter of women and infantry. We've got a lot of testing we've got to do on that. There's a lot of a lot more information that we have to get and bring in before we can make any kind of recommendation as to the matter of women and infantry or women and reconnaissance. And so the jury's out on that. And but but we're approaching it the same way, responsibly with a good methodology. And, you know, the other thing I've got besides responsible for Marine Corps that's that's ready combat ready. I'm also responsible for the health and well being of all Marines. You know, my idea is to not go out and break Marines just for the sake of trying to prove a point. So I'm mindful of that because when moms and dads give me lonely their daughters, they don't expect me to come home broken. So I'm so there's a balance there and I'm working our way through. I'm actually pretty optimistic about it how we're doing it. Good to go, sir. I think that clarifies it. The last one we got for you is the five or four the most asked question on social media. And it's will you ask the commandant if I can roll my sleeves again? And a couple days or last night, actually, you came out and said, you know, Marines, we're going to start rolling our sleeves again. Personally, I rolled my blouses, sitting in my closet, I look at it every day when I when I go home and March 9th, I'm going to put that baby on. But how'd that come about? Can you talk a little bit about rolling sleeves? Yeah, first of all, I'm actually pretty excited about it. And we made the decision last night. I, you know, I've sat around and listened for two years. And and and it's the questions have kind of begun to wane when Sergeant Major and I are in formations with Marines, we gather them around the school circles. But, but, but we still get them. We go to Afghanistan and talk to the units and they'll be a young double dog in their little safe for when we're going to go back to sleeves up. And, and what's become clear to me is that this is important to the Marines. The decision to put them down was made on our battlefield experience. It was made on what the lessons we've learned in combat. You know, we don't, we weren't in Iraq, even when it was really, really hot with sleeves up. We've always been sleeves down. We're sleeves down today in Afghanistan. So taking those lessons and understanding we're a war fighting force seemed to me to be a reasonable way to approach the sleeves up sleeves down business two and a half years ago. But you know what? It's a small thing. And there's only one person that can, that can take care of that. And it's me. There's only one person that can change that. And it's me. And if it's important to the Marines, then it's important to me. And in my meetings with the non-commissioned officers, they've, you know, they represent, you know, they're that middle ground, you know, we have 144,500 Marines or NCOs or below. So they're a pretty important piece of our core. And they have respectfully and but persistently said, Commandant, when can we go back? And it's important to them. And so it's something I could give back to the Marines. And actually, I was pretty excited about it last night when we hit send. I don't think I realized the reaction was going to be quite as positive as it is. But but I think it's, I think it's pretty neat. And I don't really got a picture of Chesty in there or not, but you can throw Chesty on the screen here and somewhere in this thing. And even Chesty at the barracks got excited and got his sleeves rolled up. He's pretty pumped up. So it's it's it's something I could give back and I'm pleased to be able to do that. And before we close up, sir, is there anything else you want to add for the toward the reawakening or any other points that I missed? I do. I tell you what, you know, the there's been some only because the storyline got kind of got captured and hijacked early on. And some misinformation went out about the reawakening and the matter of real what what do you mean by reawakening? You mean you're implying we're going to sleep, you know, I've been we've been fighting for 12 years. And that really wasn't it at all. It was it was, how do you how do you kind of put an umbrella statement or action over the top of kind of getting back to these fundamental basics that I talked about earlier, those four tenets that formed a full soul of the core. You know, we talked about some other terms for that. It started major and I did and one was reset. And we reset. Well, but when you reset things, and we're resetting the core right now with equipment, you know, we're 75% of our gears out of Afghanistan. It's going through the depots and it's getting reset. And then we're going out to the units and we're resetting gear in Westpac and and we'll be putting more gear on Australia. That's reset. You reset mechanical things. So when you're trying to capture those things like leadership and and adherence to standards, those things that are the soul, that's the part that we need to that have always stood us well. So we want to just reawaken that, you know, get back to that. It doesn't mean we've been asleep at all. So that's, I guess, probably the first point I'd make. There's nothing to do with that we've been anything but asleep. We've been very successful. The second point I'd make is I'll tell you what, when Sergeant Major Knight looked to the NCOs and talked to them, we were in Quantico yesterday and there was somewhere between 1,300 and probably 1,500 NCOs. They filled almost the entire theater and they get it. And I am so proud of our non-commissioned officers. They understand. They understand what leading Marines is all about. And they understand that they're kind of the hinge point to kind of rekindle the soul of the Corps and get back to those fundamental things that have caused us to be victorious. You know, when we crossed the border into Iraq on March 23rd of 2003, there were 70,000 Marines there. And I tell the NCOs out of that 70,000 Marines there were probably less than 500 that were wearing combat action ribbons. I think about that. So why were we able to be so successful? I mean, we were rolled into Baghdad and somewhere around less than, I think it was day 28, you know, we pulled the statue down. There was Marines that did that. There was a Marine tank battalion that pulled that statue down and said, I'm the same. And that really signified kind of the end of his regime. What's caused us to be so successful throughout all this, the campaign in Iraq without combat experience? And it was discipline. It was an NCO looking at those young Marines and saying, okay, it's on pay very close attention. This is what you're going to wear. This is how you're going to train. This is the amount of ammo you're going to have with you. We're going to drink water every hour. You're going to, this is a number of the amount of food you're going to carry with us. And this is the way we're going to train. This way we're going to do business. It's discipline, adherence, destructions. That's what got us. That's why we went through the all Romalia oil fields, Nasseria, split the force, met outside of Baghdad. So I want to thank the NCOs for being willing to step up to play and recognize that. I think it's pretty neat. Good to go, sir. That's all we have for you. Thank you so much for your time. So sun's out, gun's out. Sun's out, gun's out.