All Things Considered (8:00 PM ET) - NPR June 08, 2004
Reservist Michael Belter is recalled to duty in Iraq
MICHELE NORRIS, host: Faced with a stubborn insurgency in Iraq and mounting US casualties there, the US Army is looking for fresh troops. Last week, tens of thousands of American soldiers who had been poised to leave the military learned they would be ordered back into service. Meanwhile, thousands of inactive reserve troops are also being called up. NPR's Anthony Brooks reports on one soldier who shipped out this week.
ANTHONY BROOKS reporting: Michael Belter thought he'd be spending this summer with his wife Hillary(ph) and doing his job as a senior manager at the American Electric Power Company in Columbus, Ohio. But a letter from the Army's Human Resource Command suddenly changed that.
Lieutenant Colonel MICHAEL BELTER (Individual Ready Reserve): I was shocked. You could see on the window envelope, you know, something basically akin to a draft notice that could keep us on active duty for up to two years.
BROOKS: Belter is a lieutenant colonel in what's called the Individual Ready Reserve. These are former soldiers who still owe the Army time, and can be called back in case of national emergency. Belter is 49 with a 25-year Army career behind him. He hasn't seen active duty in more than seven years. But this spring, he was ordered to Ft. Bliss, Texas, for some quick training in first aid, Iraqi culture, how to spot an improvised bomb and how to operate his own equipment.
Lt. Col. BELTER: They issued out a new set of equipment that holds all the canteens and all the stuff like that. So Wednesday night, I was sitting there trying to put this piece of equipment together. Thursday morning, I was looking out the side of my eye and eyeballing everybody else, saying, 'Oh, that's how it should be put together, how you connect it to the belt.' So, yeah, I did feel a little rusty on some things. Last time I fired a pistol was 1996 or 1997. But once I got through the first couple rounds, it just became, you know, pretty natural.
BROOKS: After two weeks of training, Belter is headed to Iraq this week, where he'll be doing financial work at joint command headquarters in Baghdad. There are some 118,000 former soldiers in the Individual Ready Reserve pool, and the Army says as many as 6,500 of them could be recalled involuntarily. Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, says this is because civilian military planners never anticipated that the occupation of Iraq would require so many troops for so long.
Mr. MICHAEL O'HANLON (The Brookings Institution): The US Army is facing a crisis right now. This is by far its most severe test since the all-volunteer military was created after Vietnam. It's one that risks breaking the force to the point where people may not want to come back in, and the risk of actually, frankly, destroying one of the great institutions in the United States if we don't figure out how to handle this more effectively.
BROOKS: So great is the need to come up with troops that some recruiters have been pressuring former soldiers to come back, telling them if they do so now, they'll have their choice of assignments. If not, they could be sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. Andrew Exum is a former Army captain who completed combat tours in both countries and wrote the just-published book "This Man's Army." He says he's heard such complaints from many of his former soldiers.
Captain ANDREW EXUM (US Army, Retired; Author, "This Man's Army"): The sad thing is that these guys--you know, it's not that they're not patriots. Most of these guys have done multiple tours in either Iraq or Afghanistan. So you can't argue that they haven't done their duty. But now it seems like they're having their hand forced a little bit and being asked to come back in, or being coerced to do so.
BROOKS: Steve Stromwell(ph), a spokesman at US Army Reserve Command in Atlanta, acknowledges some overzealous recruiters did use coercive tactics, but he says they've been ordered to stop.
Mr. STEVE STROMWELL (Spokesman, US Army Reserve Command in Atlanta): There's a number of incentives or rationales you can offer, everything from, you know, 'Don't you miss the camaraderie of the Army?' 'Wouldn't you like to rejoin a unit?' Or, 'Wouldn't you like that extra money that you would get?' Or some of them decided they would say, 'Oh, and because if you don't, you will be involuntarily put in anyway.' And that was a miscommunication, and it was a mistake.
BROOKS: But the Army is screening the Individual Ready Reserves for expertise in jobs critical to sustaining an open-ended occupation, such as military police, civil affairs and advanced medicine. It also plans to shift 3,600 soldiers from Korea to Iraq, among several other measures to bring fresh troops into the region. John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org says these are all signs of an Army struggling to adapt.
Mr. JOHN PIKE (GlobalSecurity.org): We have a peacetime Army that is making the transition to war. We have an Army that was basically structured to fight a short war, either the lightning war of Desert Storm or a brief World War III, that is confronting the probability that it's going to be fighting a protracted war.
BROOKS: Pike says the Army is changing its force structure to include more active combat units, but he says that will take years. So in the meantime, temporary measures, like tapping the Individual Ready Reserve, will be needed. That's why Lieutenant Colonel Mike Belter is an active soldier, which shocked not only him, but also his wife, Hillary.
Mrs. HILLARY BELTER (Mike Belter's Wife): Yeah, it really did. I'm kind of used to it because he was in the Army for several years, but having him gone for an entire year is going to be really bad.
Lt. Col. BELTER: It's terribly hard on her, and she's scared that I'm going into an area that's very dangerous. We're certainly a little apprehensive because it is a combat zone.
Ms. BELTER: I really didn't think he'd have to go.
BROOKS: Hillary Belter and her husband, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Belter, who landed in Kuwait today on his way to Baghdad. Anthony Brooks, NPR News.
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