Call-Up Prompts Sour Note

Does the global war on terrorism really need an electric bass player?

The question was posed to senior Pentagon officials Wednesday by Rep. Vic Snyder, an Arkansas Democrat, who had spent part of his morning looking through the list of retired soldiers the Pentagon announced last week that it was pressing into service to support military operations in Iraq.

The call-up of the 5,674 troops from a pool of 118,000 who left the service and did not join the reserves has provoked outrage among members of Congress and others. They cite it as more evidence that the deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere have put undue strain on a volunteer military not designed for fighting counterinsurgency campaigns.

Snyder, a former Marine, noted that the Army’s list included two trumpeters, one trombonist, four clarinetists, three saxophone players, an electric bass player and a euphonium player.

“Is there not a way to do without the euphonium player?” Snyder asked Gen. Richard A. Cody, the Army’s vice chief of staff. “Do we need to really draft an electric bass player, to pull them back in? Is there not a way that we can’t let that kind of thing slide?”

After a laugh in the hearing room, Cody answered with a straight face that the bands have been busy, tending to services and funerals. These days, Cody said, “our bands are being stressed quite a bit.”