Army Reserves

[Charles Jannuzi]

At the risk of having my head bitten off by a ferocious feline, let me say,
first, I'm not going to quote the person who started the thread. It does go
back a few days. Search the archive if you don't remember it.  Also, this is
a bit long, but at least it is not bricolage from something someone wrote
elsewhere. Let's call it an exclusive for the members of LBO list. If it
answers the two questions that the person originally posting the thread
asked, then it will have served a far better purpose than much of what makes
it to the list, including Philosphy 101 explanations.

This post contained two inquiries, which I will give from memory in summary
form (since I'm working on more than one pc and don't always have everything
accessible unless I do access the web archive, and some days I just don't
want to do any web surfing).

First question, though the title belies it,  was about US presidents and
APEC meetings. Yes, it is customary for US presidents to attend the annual
economic leaders' meeting (but I'm not sure how far back). His excellency
William Clinton was the US leader to attend in 2000 and 1999 that is for
sure.

The drama for this year was going to be all about the fully developed
countries against the developing ones over the elimination of tariffs (with
Japan finding cause with the developing ones, because Japan wants to protect
its farming sector from full rice liberalization.)

(But note, that doesn't mean Japan doesn't have fairly liberal policies on
most other food imports. Just the other day it was discovered that cows here
were being fed feed with recycled animal protein --from the UK of
course--and this has been linked to the first confirmed case of mad cow
disease in the dairy herds).

Second, the person asked about the significance of the reserve call ups. So
far the call ups would be to units and key individuals (because of their
specialities) in order to support the units deploying or getting ready to
deploy. Compared to the call ups during the Persian Gulf War, the numbers
are small.

When I moved to Japan, I requested to be put from the army reserve into the
inactive reserves. I had served 8 years in the army national guard
(including one on active duty in one of the special positions created under
Reagan), 1 year in the army reserve, and still had one year on my last
enlistment when I received a call up during the Persian Gulf War. No way in
hell was I going to give up the best paying job of my life to go type i.d.
and meal cards for reservists at that hellhole Ft. Pickett, Virginia. And I
also suspected I was contacted because I also held the qualification of
'armor crewman'. I put 'addressee unknown, return to sender' on the notice
and the whole damned thing was over before I could buy a postage stamp (like
my brother said, hell, Noriega put up a better fight).

The reserves and guard got a lot of emphasis under Reagan, who funnelled
billions and billions into the National Guard Bureau (headed by a close
friend) and expanded the number of personnel in the reserves on active duty
status (this was to supplement the use of full-time 'unit technicians' who
wore uniforms but were in civilian slots, but also increased the total
number of people on active duty without Congressional approval).

There was a rational idea there: if you could get the reserves and guard up
to a higher state of readiness, you could cut the number on active duty. The
reserves also serve as a great pool of equipment, since in order to drill,
they have to maintain a lot of things like tanks, artillery, etc. Reserve
equipment--such as M48 main battle tanks-- was used to bail Israel out when
it was on the verge of losing to Egypt.

Most personnel in the reserves are not on active duty. A significant number,
have, however prior active duty service. This is especially true of the
combat arms, like artillery, infantry, armor.  At a minimum all reservists
have done some active duty--which would be competing military basic training
and special duty training, which are all run by the active armed services.

There are two types of reserves: those who are 'inactive' and do not
drill--basically they are just names on a list (see Persian Gulf War
anecdote above). Then there are 'active' reserves, those who drill one
(LONG) weekend a month and about two weeks out of the year.

There is also an interesting complementary structure which integrates the
state militias into a national force. The Army has both the national guard
and the Army reserves; the Air Force has a similar parallel structure. The
Navy and the Marines have reserves.

There are all sorts of interesting things hiding out in the military
reserves. For example, the Air Guard tends to be at a high state of
readiness and its pilots are often more combat-ready than the Air Force or
Navy. Also, the Army's reserve keeps a huge fleet of ships for transport
(which is why you can be a sailor in the army).

>From experience, I expect much of the guard is as bad as what you see in
movies like 'Rambo'. Still, in rural areas where reserve and guard
employment is a significant amount of income, there are units with high
levels of participation and esprit de corps. Such units have made
transitions pretty much from reserve straight to combat. They did so in WW
II, and they did so in the Persian Gulf War.


It was a reserve unit from rural Pennsylvania--not that far from where that
plane crashed--that took the most enemy-inflicted casualties when an Iraq
Scud landed in the middle of their encampment. Those killed included women,
since this was a support unit.

Other interesting things: you could be a prior service marine and serve in
the army guard or reserves, but in order to be in the marine reserves you
have to undergo marine boot camp (it has a longer dehumanization
process--see Full Metal Jacket, the first hour that is, for good cinematic
background ).

President Clinton and his administration were pretty friendly to the
reserves and guard. I think they saw maintaining the reserves as a good way
to keep downsizing the active duty part. Really radical downsizing got way
under Bush the elder and his defense secretary Cheney because they found it
impossible to keep so many people on active duty and pay for a lot of new
hardware at the same time--and the Navy and Air Force always, always go in
for very expensive hardware.

Until the recent crisis, Bush the youngin' and cardiac case Cheney, now VP,
were talking about the same things. In fact, if true to his campaign
promises, Gore would have spent more on the troops and a smaller percentage
on the weapons programs. I believe he would have, too.

Dan Quayle and George W Bush are two former members of the national guard
who have done very well in life. Bill Clinton also has a national guard
connection, since his state hosts a guard air base and personnel training
center (which was built up under Reagan, but which Bill liked because it
spent a lot of money in his state).

It seems that it was this base that was used a lot to send arms to Central
America. One scheme was pretty simple: deploy a guard unit to Honduras for
annual training, leave a bunch of equipment behind, and then give it to the
Contras. A guard unit I was in did just that, but, ironically, I missed that
because I was away at NCO school in Ft. Knox, KY. Clinton, the new Democrat,
didn't object to this use of his state's militia, but Gov. Dukakis of
Massachussetts did.

Finally, about race and class in the military. My take on it is from direct
experience. The US doesn't have a draft, but working class/lower class men
(and women) of all races found the income much better than what the economy
offered in the 1980s and early 90s. There are higher percentages of
minorities, but nothing like the NBA or NFL. Long before the rest of the US
did, the military integrated and offered career structures to
minorities--and women. That's one reason why Colin Powell got where he is.
You might find a lot of ex military who hate US militarism, but not on
active duty.

Charles