By Howard Wilkinson
The Cincinnati Enquirer

After the 9-11 terrorist attacks on the United States, part-time soldiers - like those of the 478th Engineer Battalion in Fort Thomas - had to leave families and jobs to begin serving overseas.

It's a cycle that will continue, but is generating controversy.

The U.S. military - particularly the Army - can't wage a global war on terrorism without part-timers.

Because of a plan put in place by the Pentagon 30 years ago, the regular, active-duty military depends on the military reserves and the National Guard not only to help fight wars, but to deal with the aftermath.

But a growing number of voices on Capitol Hill, and in the statehouses where National Guardsmen are depended upon to help in natural disasters and civil disorders, say it has to change.

"It's out of control,'' said Lawrence J. Korb, an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration who is now a Washington-based defense-policy analyst.

"When this system was created 30 years ago, nobody imagined that we would be running an empire, rebuilding countries all over the world.

"Now, the U.S. can't do what it wants in Iraq without the Guard and reserves, because that's where the nation-building assets are."

Today, reservists make up about 97 percent of the Army's civil-affairs units, 70 percent of its engineering units and 66 percent of its military police. These are the soldiers most in demand in post-war Iraq.

It is why Ohio National Guard units such as the 324th Military Police Company in Middletown have been deployed since last summer and why Guard units such as the 512th Engineer Battalion of Cincinnati and the 216th Engineer Battalion, with companies in Fairfield and Felicity, are on their way to Iraq.

And it is why thousands more soldiers from National Guard armories and Reserve centers in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana are likely to be put on active duty and shipped overseas.

Today, 130,000 troops who have spent all or most of the past year in Iraq are being sent home, to be replaced by 110,000 fresh troops, about 40 percent of them reservists and guardsmen.

Korb is among defense experts who believe the military has to wean itself from its dependence on the "weekend warriors'' of the Guard and Reserve - not because they can't do the job, but because of the disruption frequent call-ups cause in the lives of reservists and guardsmen.

Some in Congress are calling for a permanent increase in the number of active-duty military to take the pressure off the Reserve and National Guard.

Korb said he was encouraged by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's recent announcement of a temporary 30,000-troop increase in the Army's force level of 480,000.

"It's a start, but it needs to be permanent,'' said Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based think tank.

Korb said the Pentagon should adopt the recommendations of a recent study by retired Vice Admiral Arthur Cebrowski. It recommended creation of two division-sized elements of 13,000 each - one regular Army and one Reserve - that would be trained in the kind of post-war work the reservists and guardsmen are doing now in Iraq, such as policing and engineering.

"Now we are seeing Guard and Reserve units being called to active duty for a second or even third go-around,'' said Korb. "We can only do that to people for so long.''

It has happened in Greater Cincinnati: a Marine Reserve communications company from Cincinnati is on its second deployment, as is the Ohio National Guard's 324th Military Police Company in Middletown.

"If you are a reservist and you keep getting called to active duty, chances are you are not going to stay when you are up for re-enlistment,'' Korb said. "Not because you are not patriotic, but because you believe you've done your part and need to move on.''

There is some evidence the reliance on reservists in Iraq has had an impact. The U.S. Army Reserves missed its recruiting goals for the first time in 2003. In both Ohio and Kentucky, the National Guard is still meeting its annual goals for re-enlistment and new recruits.

A recent Enquirer survey of 105 members of the 478th Engineer Battalion who served in Iraq for five months last year found that 23 percent said they would not re-enlist when their current service periods are up. Another 23 percent said they were undecided about re-enlisting.

Reservists and Guard members today understand they may be asked to go to war.

"This is not just a weekend here and couple of weeks there anymore,'' said Lt. Col Mark Williams, a Delhi Township resident who commands the 478th. "People get into the reserves for all kinds of reasons - money for college, patriotism, because their fathers or grandfathers served.

"But, today, you have to be pretty clear-eyed about it,'' said Williams. "If you join the reserves, you could very well go to war.''

In the Vietnam era, because of the draft, being a member of the Guard or Reserve virtually assured not being called to active duty.

After the war, the Nixon administration reduced the size of the active-duty military and increased funding for the military's Reserve component and the National Guard, making it a full-fledged arm of the military.

The system, Korb said, worked reasonably well in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, when U.S. military commitments were few and the need to deploy Reserve and Guard troops almost nonexistent.

The first Persian Gulf War, when nearly a quarter-million Guard and Reserve troops were called to active duty, and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, which launched the Bush administration's global war on terrorism, changed all that.

"Suddenly we had all these commitments around the world and an active-duty military that wasn't big enough to carry them out,'' said Korb.

Some veteran Reserve and Guard members had spent decades in their units before being called to active duty in the Persian Gulf, or later, in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Tim Riker, a Cincinnati lawyer who retired four years ago as a rear admiral in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve, spent 15 years in the reserves. He did his one weekend a month and two weeks training in summer, before he was activated for Operation Desert Storm in 1990. He was called to active duty again five years later to serve in Haiti.

"There was a time when you could be in the reserves and have very little chance of seeing active duty,'' Riker said. "But the days of the weekend reservist are gone.''

E-mail hwilkinson@enquirer.com