| Comment Number: | OL-10508183 |
| Received: | 3/14/2005 8:16:07 PM |
| Subject: | Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Request for Comment |
| Title: | National Security Personnel System |
| CFR Citation: | 5 CFR Chapter XCIX and Part 9901 |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
RE: FR/Vol 70 -- 2/14/05 -- Pg 7554, Upper Left Corner: Consider the phrase, " ...the country's national security demands a highly responsive civilian workforce. The NSPS is a transformation lever to enhance the Department's ability to execute it national security mission." Loosely translated, I take this to mean that if the wars the U.S. plans to engage in are so unpopular with U.S. citizens that U.S. armed forces recruitment levels diminish (such as they have been doing for the past few years), then DoD wants to be able to augment the presence of U.S. armed forces troops in combat theaters around the world with DoD civilian employees, who would perform non-combat duties, yet be exposed to the same risks as the soldiers they'll work with. It is a little strange that this Draft Regulation does not state these aims more simply and clearly, instead of couching the goals in obscure references, clouding the DoD's purposes in a cloud of governmensese-type language. My advice to DoD is (1) Don't surrepticiously try to regulate into existence the right to send middle-aged DoD employees overseas into combat areas to reinforce deficient troop strengths. (2) Do you realize that you are talking about sending 40 to 60 year old men and women into combat zones? Do you mean that you're going to tell them to leave their families, and civic clubs and elected posts and go into danger's way? Do you mean that you're going to tell them to pack up their medicines, and spare glasses, and hearing aids? (3) Do you mean that you're going to tell them to never mind that they may have served in Vietnam, Greneda or Operation Desert Storm -- and even been wounded there? What's wrong with this picture? Here's what's wring: If the DoD can't recruit the numbers of recruits they need for our armed forces, then it should take the hint that perhaps the wars that our current national Administration so enthusiastically embraces do not have the support of the American people.