The US Army suffered another casualty last week at the hands of its long-term foe. I’m not talking about the biological weapons of Saddam Hussein; I’m talking about the political allies of the United States Marine Corps.

It seems last month, Assistant Secretary of the Army Sara Lister said some unkind things about the Marines. She called them extremists who are out of touch with society. That hit a nerve among the former Marines in Congress – who knew these leathernecks were so sensitive? The Marines called for, and got, Lister’s resignation. She said she was going to quit anyway. Sour grapes.

Ms. Lister’s statement, on the face of it, is an artless comment to be coming from the mouth of an assistant secretary of the Army. I have to wonder, since she’s quitting anyway, if she was asked to float a trial balloon. If so, it was shot down in no short order. But, if nothing else, it inspired me to ask why, after 212 years, do we still have a Marine Corps? I wonder if most Americans know what a marine is. Traditionally, marines were fighting men assigned to naval vessels. They’ve been called military hermaphrodites – not quite soldier, not quite sailor. While still formally part of the Navy, the Marines have evolved into a sort of light infantry and have been fighting land-locked battles since the first world war. Detachments of Marines also guard American embassies around the world and their band plays on the national mall every year on the Fourth of July.

The U.S. Marine Corps sees itself as an elite fighting force, Marines call themselves, “the few, the proud,” but increasingly the phrase that best describes the Marines is “the redundant.” Every activity undertaken by the Marine Corps is also performed by the Army, the Navy or the Air Force. But what they do better than the rest of the armed forces, it seems, is play politics. The Army fought hard to keep the Army Air Corps after World War Two, but it lost and the Air Force was born. But the Marines are still out there, flying airplanes.

In their struggle to endure without a clear mission, the Marines too often see their primary opponents as the other branches of the US armed services. Even Marine historians admit that the rapid buildup of troops in Vietnam was due in part to competition between the Army and the Marines for the dominant role in American ground forces.

Sara Lister claimed the Marine Corps runs the risk of disconnection with the rest of American society. She may be right. Their 19th century uniforms and their culture of a warrior class may recall a history of loyalty and service, but it is a history nonetheless. The most modern connotation for the Corps is the redundancy cult for which the Pentagon is the high temple. Why have three branches of the military when you can have four?

So if indeed Sara Lister was floating a trial balloon as she heads out the door, here’s a response: deactivating the Marines is an idea worth considering.