Defense
Department Announces Civilian Expeditionary Workforce
Steve
Watson
The
move is seen by some as an initial step towards fulfilling president Obama’s
promise to form a civilian national security force as powerful as the The
intent of the program “is to maximize the use of the civilian workforce
to allow military personnel to be fully utilized for operational
requirements,” according to a Defense Department report. The
program was officially implemented one week ago, on the 23rd January, when
Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England signed Defense Department Directive 1404.10
(PDF), which provides a summation of the duties the workforce will undertake.
The
directive, which is effective immediately, states that civilian employees of
the DoD will be asked to sign agreements stating that they will deploy in
support of military missions for up to two years if needed. Workforce
members, who are divided into different designations under the directive,
will serve overseas in support of humanitarian, reconstruction and, if
necessary, combat-support missions. "If
the employee does not wish to deploy, every effort will be made to reassign
the employee to a nondeploying position." the DoD report states. While
the directive suggests that the DoD will at first seek volunteers to serve in
the civilian workforce, section 4, subsection (e) paragraph (2) states: Management retains the authority to direct and assign
civilian employees, either voluntarily, involuntarily, or on an unexpected
basis to accomplish the DoD mission. In
addition, the directive states that all workforce members will be subject to
physical and psychological testing, both before and after deployment. The
directive refers several times to the civilian workforce as a component of
the "Total Force", which it describes as "The organizations,
units, and individuals that compromise the DoD resources for implementing the
National Security Strategy." This "Total Force" includes
active, reserve and retired military personnel in addition to DoD civilian
employees. ·
A d v e r t i s e m e n t ·
Back
in July 2008, Barack Obama, then the presidential front runner, called for a "civilian national security force"
as powerful as the "We
cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national
security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian
national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as
well-funded," Obama told a
Colorado Springs audience. The
comments that were ignored by the vast majority of the corporate media but
were found to be troubling by some independent journalists who compared the
idea to the formation of the Nazi Hitler Youth. Fears
of "youth brigades" or civilian stasi style units increased
following Obama’s appointment of Rahm Emanuel to chief-of staff. In
his book, "The Plan: Big Ideas for The
book also notes, "Some Republicans will squeal about individual freedom,
ruling out any likelihood that they would let people opt out of universal
citizen service." Emanuel
is also an enthusiastic supporter of the United States Public Service Academy Act,
a lobbying group founded in 2006 in order to promote the foundation of an
American public service academy modeled on the military academies - a youth
corps whose students would be trained in "civilian internship in the
armed forces". Furthermore,
in a rediscovered 2006 audio clip of an interview with Ben Smith of the New
York Daily News, Emanuel outlined the agenda for
compulsory military-style training, essentially a domestic draft, aimed at
preparing Americans for a chemical or biological terrorist attack. When
controversy arose over the program last November, the use of the word
"required" to describe the program was removed from Obama’s change.gov website
and replaced with "community service" type terminology. Though
the civilian expeditionary workforce program is restricted to DoD employees,
similar programs have already been established for public sector workers. One
such program has seen hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and
utility workers recently trained and dispatched as "Terrorism Liaison
Officers" in Colorado, Arizona and California to
watch for "suspicious activity" which is later fed into a secret
government database. Research related articles: 1.
Charlie Rangel and Obama’s “Civilian Defense
Corps” 2.
Obama’s Civil Defense Program Resembles Domestic Draft 3.
Obama
Calls For National Civilian Stasi 4.
Department of Defense ups weapons sales to foreign governments
5.
Rahm Emanuel and Obama’s Civilian Security Force 6.
Starbucks: “Are You In” Obama’s Civilian National
Security Force? 7.
New Rapid-Response Forces to Bolster Homeland Defense Mission
8.
“New Rules” for Obama’s National Civilian
Security Force 9.
Obama’s “Civilian National Security Force” 10.
Inside
the Cyber Defense Group 11.
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Reserve |
