Under the plan, the authorized troop strength of the Army Reserve would drop from 205,000 ? the current number of slots it is allowed ? to 188,000, the actual number of soldiers it had at the end of 2005. Because of recruiting and other problems, the Army Reserve has been unable to fill its ranks to its authorized level.Army leaders have said they are taking a similar approach to shrinking the National Guard. They are proposing to cut that force from its authorized level of 350,000 soldiers to 333,000, the actual number now on the rolls.
Should we really set the amount of available slots according to the number of folks actually signed up? Is this to make recruiting numbers look better?
A good friend of mine once had me talked into joining the Guard. I will never forget, he always said, "one weekend a month, man, that's it."
(Link via America Blog)
There is a difference between Reserve and National Guard, the Guard being the descendant of the ready state's militia, which was frequently called out by the governor to handle internal violence, help in disasters, fight Indians, and so on. The Reserve were the regular officers and noncoms held in reserve to be called to active duty in case of national emergency. The guard was therefore much more political, more often regarded by the regulars as kind of beer-bellied best friends of the local political wheels, and the Reserve considered itself the real professionals.
That's old history, and our draft-dodging, armchair warrior president has nationalized the Guard and used it indiscriminantly as if it were a standing army. Witness the travails of Louisiana trying to handle the chaos of Katrina, while being short whole battalions of Guard who were on duty in Iraq. I'll grant that today's warfare, with the need for training in urban street fighting, and the incredible new weapons which give the average grunt the firepower of a whole regiment (or more) makes for a different military today compared to just a few years ago.
But there is something sadly out of kilter here. A standing army in a democracy has always been regarded as a potential menace to that democracy, and my father (a Reserve officer called to active duty one year before Pearl Harbor) always said the great glory of the American system was the absolute subordination of the military to the elected political leaders. I am uneasy about the so-called "modernization" going on. How are we going to manage the duties of Mr. Bush's empire if we shrink our troop level?