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 "You are the best among us," McCain tells Guard By Staff Sgt. Jim Greenhill
                National Guard Bureau
 SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - "America must make a new and lasting commitment to the National Guard," U.S. Sen. John McCain said here Aug. 27. "The actions of Citizen-Soldiers and -Airmen since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have changed how Americans think about the National Guard," McCain told the National Guard Association of the United States' 129th General Conference. "Prior to 9/11, a lot of us didn't always fully appreciate the power and potential of the Guard and what it might one day be called upon to do,"  said the Republican senator from Arizona. "But my friends, we understand it now. The distinction between the Guard and active forces a distinction that once was so clear is now virtually undetectable. Not since World War II have we asked so much of the Guard, not only overseas, but at home. You understand both the value and the price of freedom. You are the best among us." McCain called for a slew of commitments to the National Guard, including: **Following guidelines on how often deployments occur and how long they last.** "Failure to do so abuses the trust of those who serve and is a national disgrace," he said.
	**Providing enough equipment.** "We must never, never ask our young men and women to go into harm's way without the equipment and training they need to do their job effectively and safely whether the enemy they face is a military force, terrorist cell, pandemic disease, earthquake, fire or flood,"  McCain said.
	**Treating Citizen-Soldiers and Airmen better.** "It means establishing a new compact with our Guard and Reserve component personnel to ensure they have the pay they deserve, the career opportunities they merit, and the level of service that befits their time, capability and need," he said. "It means making certain that our Guard and Reserve members, and their families, receive the proper health care they deserve and have been promised. It means guaranteeing that all injured service members are treated with equal care and dignity."
	**Treating governors and adjutants general as partners in national and homeland security policymaking.**
	**Elevating the position of the chief of the National Guard Bureau to a four-star billet and updating the bureau's charter.** "Achieving these imperatives will require breaking old paradigms, shedding outdated thinking and understanding the new capabilities that are so vital in the modern security environment," McCain said. Calling the men and women of the National Guard a national treasure, McCain said that today, as in World War II, Minutemen are fighting in every theater and every major campaign. "Thousands of National Guard Soldiers and Airmen once again fight alongside their active component comrades on every battlefield in the war against militant Islam,"  McCain said. "From the mountains of Afghanistan to the back alleys of Iraq, Guard and Reserve personnel are engaged in every aspect of this conflict. Today's National Guard Soldiers and Airmen, together with the Reserve forces, are the next Great Generation." Citizen-Soldiers and Airmen defending the homeland and prosecuting the warfight overseas are cut from the same patriotic cloth as their predecessors who answered the call at Concord and Bunker Hill, Gettysburg and Cold Harbor, the Argonne Forrest and the beaches of Normandy,"  McCain said. While McCain said that he does not miss the Cold War, he said the long war the United States faces today is as difficult as and more destabilizing than any challenge America has ever faced. "The world in which many of us served in the past was a dangerous one but more stable than the world today," the Navy veteran and former prisoner of war said. "We confronted a massive, organized threat. Our enemy was evil, but not irrational. For all the suffering endured by captive nations, for all the fear of global nuclear war, it was a world made fairly predictable by a stable balance of power until our steadfastness and patience yielded an historic victory." The stakes are high and the National Guard is vital, McCain said. "We confront an enemy that so despises us and modernity itself that they would use any means, unleash any terror, cause the most imaginable suffering to harm us and to destroy the world we have tried throughout our history to build,"  he said. "The new security environment [requires] that we use all elements of national power to defeat radicalism. The National Guard will play a vital role " because its Citizen-Soldiers and -Airmen bring such a wide range of skills and capacities to the force." McCain was effusive in his thanks to Guardmembers for their sacrifice and service. "No matter the danger to our security or safety " at home or abroad " whether from the violent foes of freedom or the turbulent forces of nature, wherever and whenever America has called, the National Guard has answered,"  he said. "You have always been ready. You have always been there." The senator spoke at the largest annual conference in the 129-year history of NGAUS. About 4,300 people registered this year, according to John Goheen, the group's communications director. By contrast, about 2,500 people registered for the 2006 conference. The conference host, NGAUS, includes nearly 45,000 current and former officers. The nation's oldest veterans' or military service organization was created in 1878 to provide unified Guard representation in Washington with the goal of obtaining better equipment and training by petitioning Congress for more resources, the same mission it has today.
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