Families, volunteers essential to nation's defense, says Reserve Affairs chief

  • Published
  • By Army Staff Sgt. Jim Greenhill
  • National Guard Bureau
DEARBORN, Mich. (AFNS) --  Family support is vital to the more than 700,000 members of the National Guard and Reserve who have been called to duty since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the assistant secretary of defense for Reserve Affairs said here July 27.

"The only way that we can sustain that kind of effort is by having strong families and strong relations with our nation's employers ... both of those groups have served magnificently so far," Dennis M. McCarthy told 1,200 attendees of the 2009 National Guard Family Program Volunteer Workshop here.

"Volunteers are the heart and soul of any successful family readiness program," he said. "We simply could not have successful programs without the work that our volunteers do."

A presidential appointee confirmed by the Senate on June 25, Mr. McCarthy is responsible for the overall supervision of the affairs of the 1.2 million-strong reserve component for the Department of Defense.

A former active-duty Marine and Vietnam veteran, he retired as a lieutenant general commanding the Marine Corps Reserve. One of his sons serves in the National Guard, another in the Marine Corps Reserve.

"These men and women have served in Operation Noble Eagle, Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom," Mr. McCarthy said of guardmembers and reservists deployed since 9/11. "They've served at bases and stations here in our country (and) on the northern and southern borders. They've served in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. They've been enablers at Djibouti and the Horn of Africa, served aboard ships at sea, and as peacekeepers in Bosnia, in Kosovo and in the Sinai."

Some 948 Guardmembers and Reservists have died during that service, including 708 killed in action, Mr. McCarthy said.

"It's clear ... that our country is going to continue to be under attack," he said, "and it's going to need the Total Force effort that we have seen over the last eight years to continue to defend our country."

Total Force refers to the combination of the active and reserve components, and "that level and that intensity of service is unquestionably going to continue," he said.

"In doing that, we're all going to stay on this rotational cycle that we have come to accept almost as 'the new normal' over the past eight years," Mr. McCarthy said. "Units are going to get ready, they're going to deploy, they're going to come home, they're going to rest and retrain and refit and get ready again and go again, and those who choose to make a career of the military service and the reserve components are going to be making these cyclic deployments."

For that reason, family programs must by tailored to meet the unique needs of the reserve components, which are different from the active-duty components, Mr. McCarthy said.

Reservists, for example, are dispersed throughout every community in America rather than concentrated on posts and bases. "We need to shape our programs to meet our situation," he said.