The speech (the meat of the issue starts around the 13 minute mark and hits it at the 17 minute mark):
When it comes to Barack Obama, I’m not merely disappointed anymore. Now I’m scared.
From Paul Joseph Watson in Infowars
Presidential frontrunner Barack Obama has called for a “civilian national security force” as powerful as the U.S. military, comments that were ignored by the vast majority of the corporate media but compared by one journalist to the Nazi Hitler Youth.
“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 earlier this month.
Hmm. Now I don’t tend to stop at one source when I see something as shockingly provocative as this.
So I found this in the usually reliable Federal Times. Apparently the idea wasn’t Obama’s but Robert Gates’ which might explain why Obama is toying with the idea of keeping him on in his administration:
Obama did appear to back a soft-power vision Gates began advocating in a series of speeches last fall: a more modern State Department and “civilian national security force” that could “deploy teams that combine agricultural specialists and engineers and linguists and cultural specialists who are prepared to go into some of the most dangerous areas alongside our military.”
“If we’ve got a State Department or personnel that have been trained just to be behind walls, and they have not been equipped to get out there alongside our military and engage, then we don’t have the kind of national security apparatus that is needed,” he said. “That has to be planned for; it has to be paid for. Those personnel have to be trained. And they all have to be integrated.”
In this version of the CNSF, it appears the view would be a ‘force multiplier’ much the same as the current civil affairs branch of the Army, only beefed up with extra personnel from different disciplines. Overall, not a bad idea in many circumstances but that’s not what Watson, or Joseph Farah of WND (whom Watson quotes extensively) think this is going to be:
“If we’re going to create some kind of national police force as big, powerful and well-funded as our combined U.S. military forces, isn’t this rather a big deal?” wrote Farah.
“Are we talking about creating a police state here? The U.S. Army alone has nearly 500,000 troops. That doesn’t count reserves or National Guard. In 2007, the U.S. Defense budget was $439 billion. Is Obama serious about creating some kind of domestic security force bigger and more expensive than that? If not, why did he say it? What did he mean?”
Well, did he mean what he said in the Federal Times’ article? Why doesn’t anyone else think to Google before they write?
The Federal Times article, however, in it’s own right, paints a picture of a wanna be Generalissimo who sees a major expansion of the military with a possible expansion of its scope and powers.
WASHINGTON and COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., wants a full-spectrum military that can engage all enemies, from small-scale terrorist threats to international peers — and he signaled he would free up funds, in part, by pulling out of Iraq and scrutinizing major defense programs.
In his most extensive interview to date exclusively on military matters, Obama also pledged to:
• Expand the Army and Marine Corps while enhancing American air and naval superiority.
• Invest in nonmilitary capabilities in the State Department and elsewhere to better complement the military in advancing national security goals.
• Maintain U.S. technological superiority by using money now being spent on the war in Iraq to fund maintenance and buy new equipment.
• Consider retaining Defense Secretary Robert Gates in his administration to ease the first wartime transition in 40 years.
“What I want is a fully integrated armed forces that can deal with the full spectrum of threats that are out there,” Obama told editors from the Military Times publications, the sister group of Defense News. “I want them to be able to engage in counterinsurgency and asymmetrical presences that are out there. I also want them to be able to respond if near peers are able to mount attacks in situations that are more conventional.”
Interesting enough talk coming from a so-called ‘peace’ candidate (of course he’s anything but). But no mention here of a DOMESTIC component to this CNSF.
So let’s look some more.
“I won’t just ask for your vote as a candidate,” he said. “I will ask for your service and your active citizenship when I’m president of the United States. This won’t be a call issued in one speech or one program. I want this to be a central cause of my presidency. We will ask Americans to serve. We will create new opportunities for Americans to serve.”
Obama said he would boost the size of the active military, but that the nation’s future depends on more than just additional soldiers.
“It also depends on the teacher in East L.A., or the nurse in Appalachia, the after-school working in New Orleans, the Peace Corps volunteer in Africa, the Foreign Service officer in Indonesia,” he said.
Obama reflected on how the presidencies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy both made public service hallmarks of their administration and how the nation was the better for such efforts.
He promised to increase AmeriCorps slots from 75,000 to 250,000 and pledged to double the size of the Peace Corps by 2011.
“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set,” he said. “We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.”
Well there’s the quote in some context but it seems a little ambiguous. What comes before sounds vaguely Kennedyesque but one wonders if Obama really means he will ‘ask’ Americans or, at some point, tell them how and when to serve their country.
And will those ‘new opportunities to serve’ come about to give people who are unemployed and desperate something to do?
Kurt Nimmo in Infowars mentions it here
It has nothing to do with al-Qaeda, either, a phantom force Joseph Farah and his neocon buddies believe pose a serious threat to America. It has everything to do with subduing those of us who may resist an accelerated move toward fascist corporate globalization, one-world government, and the effort to turn the planet into a slave labor gulag where half the population exists on less than a dollar or two a day. It’s all about forcing us to accept the New Serfdom at gunpoint.
In the months and years ahead, with the engineered deconstruction of the economy, a “domestic security force” possibly the size of the U.S. military will be required to “to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals,” as Rockefeller functionary Brzezinski might describe it.
Something of this size and scope will be required, especially with the very real prospect of foods riots and civil unrest as America is reduced to a third world cesspool, an eventuality if the NWO has its way.
In the meantime, after Obama is elected – or McCain, it really makes no difference – they globalists may be recruiting your neighbors or kids to do their bidding.
I can see a little bit of rationale to what some people are alleging here. Will this new corps or citizens get shiny uniforms too?
So what is left unstated is how this CNSF merges with what he’s saying above. And that’s where the imagination can run wild.
But there’s more - Obama has big plans for the schools:
Obama called for greater integration with schools, so that young Americans are better prepared to be active citizens. He said he would make federal assistance conditional on school districts establishing service programs and set the goal of 50 hours of service a year for middle and high school students.
“Just as we teach math and writing, arts and athletics, we need to teach young Americans to take citizenship seriously,” he said.
For college students, Obama would set the goal at 100 hours of service a year and repeated his pledge to create a $4,000 annual tax credit for college students that would be tied to that level of service.
Well if the government schools aren’t turning out enough worker widgets now Obama will make sure that funding is contingent on forcing some kind of government approved service program on the students. And how does one “take citizenship seriously” and according to whose definition? Who will determine the standards and content for such a indoctrination (for that’s what it is)?
This IS starting to get scary.
More on this from the German Press Agency in Monsters and Critics:
‘Loving your country shouldn’t just mean watching fireworks on the fourth of July,’ the Illinois senator said. ‘Loving your country must mean accepting your responsibility to do your part to change it.’
Apparently whether you like it or not.
And apparently the CNSF won’t be fully explained anytime soon, according to this story in the World Net Daily (I hate linking there but what can one do when they have real news?):
Campaign officials have declined to return any of a series of WND telephone calls over several days requesting comment. Nor have they posted a transcript of the speech on their website.
The lines are not included in a transcript of the prepared remarks published by the Denver Post and Wall Street Journal.
That IS strange. Why not? Farah is right to ask reporters covering Obama to ask him about it. We’ll see.
From listening to the speech on You Tube it does seem Obama is referring to some way of beefing up the Peace Corps and the State Department’s presence overseas. But his emphasis on a grand integrated national program is disquieting when one considers that it could only be staffed if a great number of people suddenly found themselves out of work.
Others commenting wonder how Obama will pay for all of this. He really doesn’t say specifically other than saying he’ll get some saving from ending the war in Iraq (while broadening it in Afghanistan) and through fighting fraud waste and abuse. This has been said before with predictable results.
On the whole, after hearing this speech, I am concerned at what Obama is really getting at here and how it would be funded and implemented. Listen for yourself and see if you have the same concerns.
