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U.S. Plans Targeted Draft for Computer Personnel
waytoomuchcoffee writes "The US Selective Service System is drawing up plans for a 'special skills draft'. There is already a system in place to draft health care personnel, and this system would be expanded in order to 'rapidly register and draft' computer specialists."
Type 1 diabetes was never this handy! They don't want me anywhere near the military.
Just say you don't know how to use Microsoft products.
'rapidly register and draft' computer specialists
Better go out and start writing my e-mail with Outlook Express! That will immediately prove I am not a computer specialist
I thought they were outsourcing these things :)
Next up: Outsourcing missile control to China...
I'm amazing. You aren't. SUCK IT
you dont know how to close I tags either!
The present operation of the US Selective Service is more or less trivial because the draft system not active, and it takes an Act of Congress in order to activate it. However, an Act of Congress can also totally rewrite the rules,
The draft in its present form is also very unconstitutional because it discrimates between men and women. In this day and age, that makes it a political untouchable. To require women to register will spark protests, but to not require them to do so would lead to court injunctions halting the draft process.
Congresspeople also have learned something from the Vietnam war. If a war is so unpopular that we are out of "weekend warrior" reserves and we can't convince people to join on their own, as a politician you should be voting to force a withdrawl rather allow the war to continue. To be depleted to the point that a draft is needed in modern times is a sign that we've already lost and just can't admit it.
The only people in Congress who called for a draft during recent years have been those who oppose the president's military plans. By rolling out a draft, or even raising the possiblity of a draft, a war effort suddenly becomes less popular.
Bottom line... the Selective Service exists only as a tool to be used in a doomsday situation, just like all of the city fallout shelters that were built in the USA during the cold war to be prepared for a nuclear bomb that never came. I'd consider anything new we hear from the Selective Service to be a rarely-used bureaucracy trying to justify its existance because in tight budgets, cutting the Selective Service's staff is always a low-pain cut.
It's about a MILITARY DRAFT. One of the exemptions from draft is type 1 diabetes.
Will they be outsourcing this draft to india as well?
Or... to learn how to spell "Rob Malda".
Why not just offer large enlistment bonuses and perhaps raise the age limits? I'll bet there are a lot of 40-something geeks who'd be willing to sign up. It would also be a lot easier politically than restarting the draft, and probably get better results: volunteers tend to do better work than draftees.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
This doesn't make too much sense to me.
In the past 10 years, computer specialists in the military were offered large retention bonuses to stay in the military and reenlist. Now those bonuses aren't to be seen. I know from experience.
So why isn't the military trying harder to retain these already military trained computer specialists but supposedly drawing up a draft? Something doesn't jive here.
This guy is way out there
Drop and give me twenty shell scripts!
If the military want to get a bunch of computer specialists, they can just hire them. Drafts are usually only used to acquire cannon fodder because the people who get drafted are often the unrepresented class. It hardly seams fair to pay one CS student's way thought college with ROTC, and then hijack another grad's career without proper compensation.
...for all those jokes we made about him on Slashdot!
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
Well, I always suspected it. I am a member of the US Naval Reserve and about two years ago, the NAVRES asked all of it's members to fill out a "skills profile". This profile would be used to solicit qualified members and ask them to volunteer to fill temporary billets as they arose. The program was presented as a way to find the best service member for the task and to offer them the oppurtunity to take orders for that job. A lot of the billets that open up are from 6 weeks to 9 months.
I was always dubious of doing this, becuase if there were ever a "crisis" and they REALLY needed someone with my skills, I foresaw the "volunteer oppurtunity" becoming an "involuntary recall to active duty" in a heartbeat.
I doubt this decision is directly related, but now they have a massive database of skills that they can search through and draft from first.
Veritas patesco per quaestio questio. Truth is revealed through questions.
Perhaps you're thinking of a different USA than the one being discussed. The last time the draft was instituted was during the Vietnam War, a conflict that didn't threaten the existence of the country. Not every American is willing to fight and die to keep their country the most powerful in the world, and there is no reason someone should be expected to.
And my unit spent most of its time in the motor pool, or in the field, digging in the dirt. Not once did I train to perform a mission as a linguist with my unit while I was in uniform, because officers can't lead soldiers who aren't in the field. It doesn't get them promoted, so they uniformly oppose it. Every bit of funding for every linguist mission was cut, and the mandatory eight hours of language maintenance required for all linguists was gradually reduced to no maintenance at all.
The only time I was actually useful was while on TDY.
Any assertion that the military needs people in these specialties is not true. They had them, indeed have them, and I can pick up the phone right now, call the RSDNCO of my former unit, and ask what they will be doing on Monday. I am confident that the answer will be: "motor pool".
This is something that has been brewing since before the Kennedy Report, and it still pisses me off, especially in light of all the back-pedalling from the FBI and military that they "don't have the resources". They did have them. Due to mismanagement and fucked-up priorities (primarily the OER system), they couldn't keep them. My re-enlistment counseling with my commanding officer (whom I respected a great deal) was, "well I can offer you the Army nurse program, or physician's assistant, but unless you want to become an officer, you won't be able to transfer out of your MOS because it's short".
During my time in the military, I think about one in three linguists re-enlisted, always for choice of duty station. I cannot count the number of linguists that disappeared, that training wasted, because they spent four (or more) years doing nothing. If they left the military under good terms, they should have been actively pursued by the FBI or NSA so that training wouldn't have been wasted. But it wasn't a priority until 9/11. Then, all those three-letter agencies suddenly realized that they'd better come up with effective damage control fast, so they settled on: "we don't have the resources."
It's a lie.
Slashdot is my Mercer Box.
I'm continually astonished that people who will object to environmental regulation, "because it violates my property rights", will at the same time support the notion of the draft. Working to abolish the draft, in all forms, sounds like my patriotic duty. Blind support of the government, and forcing others to die for, and to kill for, policy they disagree with hardly sounds like serving *my* country. Maybe you live in a dictatorship, but I live in the USA.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." -- Senator Carl Schurz -- February 29, 1872. That's patriotism. The word for what you are endorsing is "jingoism". I prefer patriotism, it takes more thought, and requires more bravery.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
Voluntary military service can be thought of as the ultimate form of democracy: can't get enough people to volunteer to fight your war? Too bad, guess you can't fight it then. I can't see how forcing me to kill for a cause I disagree with is anything but slavery.
Taxes are a different deal, mainly in that they don't force me to kill, or force me to risk my life. I may disagree with how my tax dollars are spent, but as a civilian I still have all my rights and can aggitate for change. A soldier can, quite legally, be punished for disagreeing with government policy (this is why you no longer see non-anonymous interviews with soldiers who disagree with the Bush Government's policy. The first few who did so non-anonymously suffered retribution). A civilian can protest, write nasty letters, run for office against the politician who is spending his money, etc. A soldier can do none of those things. The draft is not equivilant to paying taxes.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
Since when has the draft stopped a war? The only thing the draft ensures is that politically unconnected people are forced to fight and die for causes supported for the politically connected, while their kids get cushy jobs in the Air National Guard, where no one cares if they show up or not.
The draft is slavery. I am a veteran, and I proudly volunteered. But if they were to show up claiming they had a right to my life and time - I'd go to jail first.
"THIS IS MY DISTRO. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My distro is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I master 'Vice City'."
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
Saying that "I don't have an obligation to my country" (like many of the people in this discussion have) and comparing the draft to slavery is disgusting.
I was in the military and I'm 100% against the draft. The only point of a draft in this day and age is to avoid paying a fair market value for the labor. The whole point of this nonsence is to avoid increasing taxes. Here's some food for thought, quoted from a statement by congressman Ron Paul (Republican):
Mr. Speaker, the most important reason to oppose reinstatement of a military draft is that conscription violates the very principles upon which this country was founded. The basic premise underlying conscription is that the individual belongs to the state, individual rights are granted by the state, and therefore politicians can abridge individual rights at will. In contrast, the philosophy which inspired America's founders, expressed in the Declaration of Independence, is that individuals possess natural, God-given rights which cannot be abridged by the government. Forcing people into military service against their will thus directly contradicts the philosophy of the Founding Fathers. A military draft also appears to contradict the constitutional prohibition of involuntary servitude.
During the War of 1812, Daniel Webster eloquently made the case that a military draft was unconstitutional: " Where is it written in the Constitution , in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents, and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war, in which the folly or the wickedness of Government may engage it? Under what concealment has this power lain hidden, which now for the first time comes forth, with a tremendous and baleful aspect, to trample down and destroy the dearest rights of personal liberty? Sir, I almost disdain to go to quotations and references to prove that such an abominable doctrine had no foundation in the Constitution of the country. It is enough to know that the instrument was intended as the basis of a free government, and that the power contended for is incompatible with any notion of personal liberty. An attempt to maintain this doctrine upon the provisions of the Constitution is an exercise of perverse ingenuity to extract slavery from the substance of a free government. It is an attempt to show, by proof and argument, that we ourselves are subjects of despotism, and that we have a right to chains and bondage, firmly secured to us and our children, by the provisions of our government."
Another eloquent opponent of the draft was former President Ronald Reagan who in a 1979 column on conscription said: "...it rests on the assumption that your kids belong to the state. If we buy that assumption then it is for the state -- not for parents, the community, the religious institutions or teachers -- to decide who shall have what values and who shall do what work, when, where and how in our society. That assumption isn't a new one. The Nazis thought it was a great idea."
President Reagan and Daniel Webster are not the only prominent Americans to oppose conscription. In fact, throughout American history the draft has been opposed by Americans from across the political spectrum, from Henry David Thoreau to Barry Goldwater to Bill Bradley to Jesse Ventura. Organizations opposed to conscription range from the American Civil Liberties Union to the United Methodist Church General Board of Church and Society, and from the National Taxpayers Union to the Conservative Caucus. Other major figures opposing conscription include current Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to stand up for the long-term military interests of the United States, individual liberty, and values of the Declaration of Independence by cosponsoring my sense of Congress resolution opposing reinstatement of the military draft.
So long as we understand "service" properly:
Never confuse serving the state with serving your country.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood