Reserves in name only

The Washington Post: For certain part-time soldiers in the National Guard and military reserves, life has changed dramatically in the past few years. Many of them had for a decade or more fulfilled their obligations with weekend trips to a nearby base and some summer training. Now they suddenly find themselves gone for more than a year at a time, sometimes repeatedly: Bosnia, then Afghanistan, now Iraq. "By the third rotation it gets old," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "We're using them in ways we never envisioned 20 years ago."
Increase in demand
After the Cold War, the active-duty force shrank significantly; after Sept. 11, 2001, demands on the military rose just as significantly. Those demands aren't likely to ease anytime soon. In the Iraq conflict about 45,000 reservists were activated and integrated more closely than ever before with active-duty combat troops; several were killed with Marine units. Many reservists now are working on reconstruction and nation-building in Iraq and elsewhere. When the Army downsized, it placed 97 percent of its civil affairs units in the reserves. These are doctors and nurses and people who, in Iraq, will help restart utilities and train judges and civil servants. The majority of military police -- who conduct investigations, train police officers, run prisoner-of-war camps and generally keep order -- are from National Guard units. In the evolving landscape of U.S. engagements, they are increasingly crucial and increasingly strained, called again and again for their particular expertise.
Reservists and their families will never be as fully integrated into military life as active-duty soldiers; they don't live on bases or have military families living all around them. Given how heavily the military has come to lean on them, it ought to find new ways to ease some of their burden. A 1994 law requires employers to hold reservists' jobs for them while they are serving. Some employers choose to go beyond that requirement by ensuring that their pay doesn't shrink and their health insurance doesn't lapse. In the Washington area several employers have won awards from the Defense Department for their support: the Washington, D.C., government, Lockheed Martin and Giant, as well as smaller companies -- the Fertilizer Institute, Opnet Technologies Inc. in Bethesda, Md., Frederick Brick Works Inc., the law firm of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & amp; Ciresi, to name just a few.
Help on the way
But relying on the goodwill of individual employers is not enough. Graham and other members of his committee have proposed ways to help reservists. The ideas being considered so far are fairly modest. One would allow reservists to qualify for retirement benefits more quickly. Another would give tax breaks to employers who supplement reservists' pay -- not such a daunting prospect given a Pentagon study that shows only 30 percent of reservists suffer a drop in income while serving. The most ambitious would allow all reservists to be covered full time by the military health care plan, so that when they are activated their families would not have to switch plans and doctors. Some additional benefit seems like fair compensation for the disruption many families are experiencing. It could have the practical effect of preventing a record number of resignations from the reserves, as happened after the Persian Gulf War.