Just now when I was driving home from work I heard a speech from President Bush on the radio. One thing he said that caught my attention is that he wants to form a volunter Civillian Reserve Corps, which civillians with critical skills could join and possibly deploy from. What does everyone think of this?

Sounds like conscription in a cheap tuxedo.

Volunteer != conscription, practically by definition.

What it does sound like is a way to get civilian talent at military disposal without putting them through military training. Good or bad, I dunno.

That State of the Union was such a laugh. It was funny how many times Dubya got interrupted by applause. And some/most of the policies were utter crap.

Critical skills in what?

For what?

Oh oops. I didn't notice the word 'volunteer' there.

I was just being a troll by posting a totally uninformed opinion anyway.

Oh, and www.drinkingame.us

Let me state, for the record, that I'm a rather deep-rooted Democrat, happily voted against Bush twice, and would contribute to his low approval rating if given a chance.

In spite of that, he did hit on his actual strengths. I'm not going to deny that they exist. What policies are you mocking? Mirroring fuel efficiency laws that we already know work? Increasing research into domestic renewable energy? They're building a new ethanol production plant not far from here. Actually securing funds for the health care programs he pushed through? Two years too late, but it's good that it's being addressed now. Tangible, measurable improvements in American grade schools? It's a shame that it took a Republican to bring in wisdom from the business world to get more than simply increased funding for struggling schools. More money does not always equal more results.

Do I approve of his foreign policies? Not at all. For that matter, I don't like the populist-inspired cut and run policy of the new Democratic regime. I think we need to secure peace and reduce the length of tours in Iraq, not get people out by the boatload. If it's safe, people won't care that we have troops stationed in Iraq any more than people care that we have troops stationed in Britain. Do I approve of his plans for social security? No. He didn't talk about that, though.

So, I have to ask...what're you mocking the man for?

I don't claim to know the details. I should stick one of Veri's uninformed opinion tags on this. But, for example, our military is sorely lacking in people who speak Arabic. As I'm sure you can imagine, that's more than a little problematic. Medical care is always a perk. Mechanical and material engineering projects that don't warrant a full-scale contract with a defense corporation. Things of that nature.

Whomever heard of US Army projects that don't warrant a full-scale, expensive, suspicious contract with a massive defense corporation?

I just added a poll to this thread.

I am confused. How is this different than the current Reserve system that you can sign up for? I thought he was just talking about increasing the size of the reserves. They always have those commercials to join the Army Reserves, and keep your day job.

The reserves still require military training. You have to go through the same boot camp as everyone else. You also have mandatory terms of service (albeit smaller). You also have a very high risk of being sent to Iraq (contrary to popular belief, most foreign operations are staffed with a larger percentage of reservists than active duty).

The military already uses civilians on their bases for a number of things, including expertise. I'm not sure it's a great idea to deploy someone out to a hotspot without military training, but it all depends on how the idea would be executed, I think.

My impression was that anybody and everybody has a high risk of being sent to an active combat zone when you are part of the army system. The current reserve system takes civilians and gives them military type jobs, correct? How is that any different than a Civilian Reserve Corp?

My guess would be exactly what Demetrios said... Reservists still have to go to Basic Training and AIT alongside Regular Army. They get the exact same military training as the Regular Army. The only difference between the Army Reserves and the Regular Army is that the Army Reserves are only on duty one weekend a month, and two weeks a year unless called up for 'active' duty.

I'm guessing that a Civilian Reserve Corp would be actual civilians - no military training at all, who can be called upon to do non-military tasks. Sort of like the civilians who contract to do those sort of things now, but it's not a one-time negotiated contract deal anymore, it's a job they've signed up for till their 'tour' is over.

But I could be totally wrong.

That is correct. Reservists go through the same training. The only difference, theoretically, is the time they spend in active duty.

Daganev, while the risk is overall high for everyone as you said, it's easier to deploy reservists (and even National Guard) to a specific situation, because soldiers on active duty are already, for lack of a better phrase, doing something. They have to be moved off their current post and duties.

Generally speaking, a deployment for a particular foreign operation will be about 30-40% active duty and 70-60% reserve/guard. However, the Iraq thing has lasted so long, that may not be an accurate statistic, there, and I'm not interested enough in the distribution to ask the Internet.

I have to disagree with this point, by the way. Forcing schools to do a one-track rush to study for a certain exam, and doing nothing but prepare for that exam (or lose your funding), is not the best way to teach kids... and actually removing funding from struggling schools also doesn't help the problem at all.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sh...child/bush.html

Now, this obviously isn't a current report-- these interviews were conducted a number of years ago (and some were pro, some con the NCLB act), but some of the concerns brought up in it are still valid today IMO.



If you base funding entirely on tests, you're basically encouraging a school to focus entirely upon that test to the exclusion of all else... otherwise, with drastically slashed funding, the kids won't be able to learn much of anything at all.

Edit: There's a website, Nochildleft.com, which also discusses it... but in my very, very brief examination of it I saw a lot of rather sketchy points and arguments. For example, they argue that the American school system doesn't have any problems at all. I'd be very hesitant to use this as a source. When I get back from class I'll look into a few other more current sources that are actually somewhat valid.

Currently, this is what the "good schools" do. That test is called the SATs. And for my AP classes, that test was called the AP exam.

The test that schools have to be geared towards these days, is so pathetically easy, that if people aren't passing them, there are some real problems.

Got it. Just doesn't make sense to me that the Civilian reservists would have 0 military training before doing work in a military operation. Not because of the "normal" reasons, but because of basic military culture that allows people to work with a certain amount of familiarity of procedure. From what my brother in law tells me, most people would be more frustrated with military procedure than anything else.

Yes, and that's why I'm not sure how this idea is going to be executed. Perhaps it will include some training; I don't know.

There are many civilians that work in the military, today, but I couldn't tell you what kind of orientation or training they have to go through to do that, if any. My only dealing with military procedure was actually being in the military.

But, for instance, if I needed blood work done, it was usually civilians that did it. Sometimes, briefings would include civilian contractors to give insight on a specific bit they were involved with. Things like that.

Heck, I was in the military and military procedure frustrated me more than anything else.