Coming down on Reservists? More and more reservists were being deployed to. Iraq and Afghanistan. My older son's reserve unit was put on active duty status in April 2006. 5 months extensive training in Camp LeJuene and 29 Palms. Rotation for USMC was 7 months out of country. He was in AnBar right before the surge was announced. I can assure you the USMC had that unit well prepared.
I want to differentiate between reservists and the reserves. I can only speak to my experience with the Coast Guard, as well.
I personally think the Coast Guard has done a horrible job including its reservists. Yes they drill. Yes they train. But they aren't "in it" every day. My feeling was some had been out of the loop for some time. So you put someone in a situation that has only passively been involved with someone who has done it day in, day out, for years. The two didn't mix all of the time.
I had 14 people working for me during the spill, some civilian (from multiple agencies), some reservists. My guys and gals were great at their jobs, but it wasn't a strictly military environment, we were responded to a continuous oil spill.
The break downs game more from the interactions I saw outside of my group. A reservist Coast Guard captain yelling at a reservist Coast Guard commander for a reason that didn't warrant quite the response, and then afairly forceful answer back from the commander.... all in the presence of junior officers like myself and enlisted members. That, generally, although not always, would have been handled behind closed doors for active duty senior officers. The Coast Guard has also gone through an organizational change that it was clear, hadn't been communicated to our reserve counterparts.
Now, that's not to say they were valuable. My folks especially were invaluable and proved themselves daily. I just don't think the Coast Guard "owned" them they way it should. I also worked for a reservist commander during the spill who was a great leader and really supported me.
There were other areas with conflict between reservists who assumed they would worldly and enlightened individuals to the institutionalized active duty members, and active duty members who believed their were finely tuned machines compared to their disconnected and uniformed reservists.
No doubt many of the reservists thought they were high speed and up on the times, but I'm not sure the Coast Guard gave them the tools to be as successful as they could have been.