mezcel - Military

Coast Guard Involvement (2008 - PRESENT) Homeland Security

Coast Guard

The United States Coast Guard regularly performs many functions vital to maritime safety. The Coast Guard’s most visible job is saving lives and property in and around American waters. The Coast Guard also enforces customs and fishing laws, protects marine wildlife, fights pollution on our lakes and along the coastline, and conducts the International Ice Patrol. The Coast Guard is also responsible for monitoring traffic in major harbors, keeping shipping lanes open on ice-bound lakes, and maintaining lighthouses and other navigation aids.

The Coast Guard is a part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. In time of war it may be placed under the command of the Navy, which operates within the Department of Defense. A vital part of the Armed Services, the Coast Guard has participated in every major American military campaign. The Coast Guard is the smallest of the armed services. Currently there are over 5,580 commissioned officers and 1,490 warrant officers. Coast Guard officers perform in many different occupations to support the mission of the Coast Guard. Each year, the Coast Guard has openings for about 300 new officers (in addition to Academy) in a wide range of challenging careers.

The service was performing conspicuous and heroic work and its fit equipment and its high usefulness were in immediate and conspicuous evidence.

The character of the Coast Guard is both civil and military. By means of military drills, training, and discipline that the service is enabled to maintain that state of preparedness for the prompt performance of its most important civil duties, which are at an emergent nature.
The Navy exist for the sole purpose of keeping itself prepared for war. Its usefulness to the government is therefore a degree of potential. The Coast Guard exists for the particular and main purpose of performing duties which have no connection with a state of war, but which, on the contrary, are constantly necessary as peace functions. It is organized along military lines because that organization is invaluable in a time of war as an adjunct and auxiliary to the Navy.

You can kick this old service around , tear it to pieces, scream from the housetop that it is worthless, ought to be abolished or transferred to the Navy, have the people in it fighting among themselves and working at cross purposes and it bobs up serenely bigger and stronger than ever.

If we enter the Department of Transportation (DOT) with a defensive attitude and with the sole objective of protecting what we have, we will find ourselves nibbled at on all sides. Our approach should be that we have expertise, loyalty, ability and military professionalism which a DOT must have to operate effectively, and perform certain functions even better than the DOT. All levels of Coast Guard personnel should be directed to at all times reflect this attitude.