The Gazette March 10, 2006
Guard role proposed in NorthCom leadership
By Pam Zubeck
A proposal from the Senate National Guard caucus would require U.S. Northern Command’s deputy commander to be a National Guard officer.
The legislation also would add a four-star Guard general to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation’s highest military leadership panel.
NorthCom, which coordinates homeland defense missions from its headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base, is led by Navy Adm. Timothy Keating and his deputy, Army Lt. Gen. Joseph Inge.
Defense expert John Pike said the proposals make sense if the changes are part of a larger plan to better manage the Guard and Reserve.
Pike, executive director of the defense think tank GlobalSecurity.org of Alexandria, Va., said the moves may signal that officials want to dedicate certain Guard and Reserve forces to homeland security after the Hurricane Katrina lesson. When Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, much of the Louisiana National Guard was deployed in Iraq, their trucks and radios with them.
“You wound up with a state National Guard that was not really set up to do the homeland security mission,” Pike said.
Pike said the Guard makes up 40 percent of U.S. forces in Iraq, which means it’s “not particularly well-organized, trained and equipped for homeland security.”
NorthCom can call upon active-duty forces, but the Guard is its main resource and constituted the largest mobilization during Katrina.
Loren Thompson, chief operating officer for Lexington Institute, an Arlington, Va., a public-policy think tank, said dictating the branch from which a commander should come is foolish.
“It’s just a bad idea to tie the hands of policymakers in terms of who they can select for a position,” he said. “There are times when it might make sense to have someone from the Guard in the top slot, but dictating that top personnel come from a certain branch will get in the way of giving the job to the best person.”
NorthCom spokesman Michael Perini said it’s too early to assess the proposal’s impact, but he noted the command now has more than 250 National Guard and Reserve personnel in its organization, including five generals.
“These service men and women provide valuable expertise on National Guard and Reserve matters in every directorate and played a significant role in close cooperative efforts like the massive life saving and sustaining efforts provided in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,” Perini said in a statement.
Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond, R-Mo., chairman of the caucus, a bipartisan group of senators, asked the independent National Guard and Reserve Commission to make consideration of the proposal a priority. A preliminary report is due in June, with the final version going to Congress in March 2007.
© Copyright 2006, The Associated Press
