BandwidthHog's Journal: Civilian Reserve Corp

WTF? Am I the only one seriously creeped out by this? How come the first word that went through my mind when I heard that bit was “Blackwater?”

And yet a cursory search of Thine Intartubes shows that World+Dog did not have the same visceral reaction I did (or has the sense to keep their damn mouths shut). So would someone please get on here and reassure me that a non-military military force is a good idea? Seems all I can think about are other examples of countries creating such, uhh, semi-military forces (for lack of a better, less chilling prefix) and pondering how that turned out for them...

Huh?

[benhocking]

I guess you must be paying more attention to something than I am. I have no idea what that something is, however. What are you talking about? Is this from the SotU address or something?

Re:

[BandwidthHog]

Yeah, about halfway through the SOTU: [whitehouse.gov]

Tonight I ask the Congress to authorize an increase in the size of our active Army and Marine Corps by 92,000 in the next five years. (Applause.) A second task we can take on together is to design and establish a volunteer Civilian Reserve Corps. Such a corps would function much like our military reserve. It would ease the burden on the Armed Forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them. It would give pe

If it wasn't being proposed by Bush...

[benhocking]

If it wasn't being proposed by Bush, it wouldn't bother me. A lot of other countries have similar things (except for the part "by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them") - OK, maybe not so similar at all. Yeah, it is interesting that I haven't heard anything about it, however.

From the summary of his ideas (which is all I've read), if they were coming from anyone else I'd think they were mostly good ideas. However, I'm afraid I will have to c

It's a way to pretend military deaths are down

[WillAffleckUW]

Think of the recent execution style killings of five Blackhawk "employees".

In WW II or Vietnam, they would have been military personnel, and counted as military casualties.

Now they can pretend we're not losing as much as we are.

This allows them to pretend fewer soldiers are dying, while the quantity each day increases nonetheless.

Don't we already have a Peace Corps?

[peacefinder]

The way I've heard it, this proposal is a way for civillin experts (engineers, firefighters, police) to participate in assisting an occupation^W rebuilding force. What I don't get is why the infrastructure-building part of this (assuming it's a good idea at all) should be distinct from the existing Peace Corps.

The police part, of course, should be called "Team America".