Reservist humor.
Posted on 07/06/2004 6:28:55 PM PDT by Cannoneer No. 4
Thom Shanker's story in the Sunday New York Times explores how post-9/11 commitments will require a rethink of the National Guard and National Reserves in defese planning:
The National Guard and Reserves must be fundamentally revamped if they are to carry the growing burden placed on them in support of the administration's military strategy, according to many commanders, Pentagon officials and respected national security experts.
With hundreds of thousands of these citizen-soldiers having deployed in the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and others engaged in missions related to the global campaign against terrorism overseas and here at home, these concerns have broad implications for the Bush administration's plans to protect the United States....
The current Guard and Reserve system was designed after the Vietnam War, a conflict in which neither President Lyndon B. Johnson nor President Richard M. Nixon called up reservists in significant numbers, fearing greater opposition to their policies. In frustration, Gen. Creighton W. Abrams, the Army chief, shaped a post-Vietnam mix of active and reserve forces to ensure that when America went to war with its new all-volunteer force, hometown America would have to go too.
Shanker does a good job of delineating the budgetary and training disparities:
Richard I. Stark, who is analyzing reserve affairs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington policy research institute, said that the Army traditionally kept about half of its capability in the Guard and Reserves, yet for years devoted only 8 percent of its budget to those units.
"That huge disparity will have to be revisited because we are using them with increasing frequency," Mr. Stark said....
Military commanders in Washington and in the combat zone frequently said in private that a number of reservists arrive for duty ill-prepared for the challenges they face in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, in particular lacking specific combat skills required even of truck drivers in the war zone. They say the reservists also do not have something more intangible but equally important: a warrior ethos, which can hardly be inculcated by training one weekend a month and two weeks a year for service in the most violent places on earth, or in the rapid weeks of accelerated training before deployment....
[N]early two months traveling in Iraq this year disclosed many first-hand examples of the disparity between active-duty troops and their Guard and Reserve comrades.
During the huge troop rotation this spring, in which nearly a quarter-million American military personnel flowed in and out of Iraq, fresh ground forces stopped first at a series of deployment camps in northern Kuwait to acclimate to the hot temperatures and focus on live-fire combat skills.
Despite spring temperatures that already pushed toward 100 degrees, and the relative safety of camps in Kuwait, commanders of active-duty units like the First Infantry Division ordered their soldiers to wear heavy helmets and flak jackets at all times except inside their tents and mess halls or en route to the showers: all part of an effort to get the troops into the combat mind-set.
In contrast, many soldiers who identified themselves as reservists walked the hot and dusty bases in shorts, baseball caps and sandals.
Even inside the war zone of Iraq, the differences were visible.
Col. Dana J. H. Pittard, commander of the First Infantry's Third Brigade, gave voice to worries about the lackadaisical approach to security shown by some reservists not under his command. On a dangerous 34-hour convoy drive north from Kuwait to Camp Warhorse, near Baquba, an insurgents' stronghold, he marched up and down a mile-long row of vehicles belonging to a mix of units, scolding scores of reservists he spotted not wearing body armor.
Read the whole thing -- and be sure to check out Phil Carter's thoughts on the matter once he reads it.
UPDATE: Here's Phil's partial response. Be sure to read the whole thing, but I thought this was a compelling point:
I talked to several Pentagon policy officials and think-tankers last week about this argument, and I am starting to see its credibility. According to this line of thought, the emergency measures cited above are not so much signs of the force breaking, as they are signs of the force working exactly as intended. That is, we are a nation at war. Our military needs extra personnel now to fight this war, and probably for the next few years. Thus, it has called up reservists and used additional temporary measures to make ends meet. But when the crisis passes (assuming it does), the military reservists will be demobilized, and the military will contract. Yes, there is some hardship for the reservists who are called up. But, this argument continues, better to call up these reservists who accept the risk voluntarily, than to conscript mass numbers of citizens and compel them to kill or be killed in combat.
Moreover, Pentagon policymakers say (and I agree) that it would be tremendously inefficient and impractical to start a draft when the personnel needs are in the thousands or tens of thousands. A draft, which traces back to Napoleon's levee en masse, is used when you need to mobilize millions of young Americans for battle. If that cataclysmic day comes, then our Selective Service system stands ready (in mothballs) to swing into action. But until then, the Pentagon argument goes, it is far more efficient and effective to use reservists.
posted by Dan on 07.03.04 at 05:47 PM
(Excerpt) Read more at danieldrezner.com ...
ping
I don't know about other Guard units, but I know in the Arkansas Brigade you get your weapon chained to you with a log chain for a week if you don't practice positive weapon control. I don't imagine leaving your body armor laying around has much better results.
My unit saw our budget cut during Clinton so badly that we had no budget for spare parts.
So if we broke something, we had to 'find' something to replace it with.
I smell a rat. We all know that the good Colonel wants everyone to "play the game" 24/7, but jeeesh!
We neutralized two jihadist countries in 2 years and captured a terrorist enabling thug and the Colonel is bitching about wearing your kevlar. Give me a break.
Don't worry Colonel...give the order and I bet those Reservist and National Guardsman will do what you command.
No doubt there are slackers in the Reserve and Guard...but that's a leadership problem....
I expect when the Defense department takes a good long look at what a bargain the Reserve and Guard are, perhaps they will start to compensate them PROPORTIONATELY for what they do.....
Reservist humor.
What brand of Arkansas Toothpick is most commonly seen hanging from their web gear?
Yep. I was part of a Guard unit once that had enlisted men with MBA'S! I would say that 90% of us had a degree of some sort or was currently in college. It was amazing. Oh yeah, the other 10% were cops (Feds, local LEOs, or state police).
Needless to say they were and are a kickass unit now attached to the 4th Infantry.
That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard of. It will have exactly the opposite effect:
"We want you to get so used to wearing your 'combat gear' everywhere while you are relaxing and waiting around in the rear that you are no longer automatically alert when you put your gear on for real."
God, the Army is dumb sometimes. Another stupid Colonel who just doesn't understand troops...
1. Promotion.
2. Physical ability and age.
3. Individual Soldier Civilian/Military Interface
I expect when the Defense department takes a good long look at what a bargain the Reserve and Guard are, perhaps they will start to compensate them PROPORTIONATELY for what they do.....
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the guard and reserves ARE compensate proportionately(two days pay for each day of drill) and full pay and benefits for active duty time.
Here are a few things that are broken in the NG. (Perhaps also the reserve.)
1. Promotion.
2. Physical ability and age.
3. Individual Soldier Civilian/Military Interface
And 40% not able to be deployed when called upon.
That's an excellent one....part of it is tied up in my point #2.
That's an excellent one....part of it is tied up in my point #2.
Agree. And pregnancy needs to be added to that.
That's an excellent one....part of it is tied up in my point #2.
I'd be willing to make a sizeable bet that the draft will return(after the election, of course), but it is inevitible with the military so stretched at this point.
HUA !..............Stay safe !
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