The Independent View

Several months ago Sen­a­tor Barack Obama qui­etly out­lined his intent to estab­lish a “civil­ian national secu­rity force.” His ador­ing media min­i­mized this and except for a few atten­tive blog­gers it escaped notice. Yet, this is back in the news. Why?

In Obama’s World Series delay­ing infomer­cial last week he stated the need to “rebuild the mil­i­tary.” Rebuild?

Sen­a­tor Barack Obama orig­i­nally attracted lib­eral Democ­rats to sup­port his can­di­dacy by endors­ing the Cau­cus for Pri­or­i­ties. At the time he said:

First, I’ll stop spend­ing $9 bil­lion a month in Iraq. I’m the only major can­di­date who opposed this war from the begin­ning. And as pres­i­dent, I will end it. Sec­ond, I will cut tens of bil­lions of dol­lars in waste­ful spend­ing. I will cut invest­ments in unproven mis­sile defense sys­tems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our devel­op­ment of future com­bat sys­tems, and I will insti­tute an inde­pen­dent defense pri­or­i­ties board to ensure that the Qua­dren­nial Defense Review is not used to jus­tify unnec­es­sary spend­ing. Third, I will set a goal of a world with­out nuclear weapons. To seek that goal, I will not develop new nuclear weapons. I will seek a global ban on the pro­duc­tion of fis­sile mate­r­ial, and I will nego­ti­ate with Rus­sia to take our ICBMs off hair-​trigger alert and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals.

Back in Sep­tem­ber, hav­ing secured the Demo­c­ra­tic nom­i­na­tion, Obama appeared to begin shed­ding some of his long-​held posi­tions. Among changes, he now wanted to increase the size the mil­i­tary. As CNN reported, McCain quickly pointed out the flip-​flop.

“Sen. Obama told the extreme left what they wanted to hear dur­ing the pri­mary, now he’s try­ing to tell you what he thinks you want to hear,” McCain responded in Mis­souri. “My friends, you may not always agree with me but you will always know where I stand.”

But not so fast. Maybe Obama’s really talk­ing more lit­er­ally. He did say “rebuild the mil­i­tary”. Which mil­i­tary? Recall that a short while back on July 2nd, Obama announced:

“We can­not con­tinue to rely only on our mil­i­tary in order to achieve the national secu­rity objec­tives that we’ve set,” he said Wednes­day. “We’ve got to have a civil­ian national secu­rity force that’s just as pow­er­ful, just as strong, just as well funded.”

First, is he say­ing that the mil­i­tary is fail­ing? Why else would you not con­tinue to rely upon it for our national security?

And cre­ate a par­al­lel “civil­ian” mil­i­tary that is “as pow­er­ful, just as strong, just as well funded”?

He hasn’t estab­lished a need, nor has he been forth­com­ing on his plans. The com­ment has been scrubbed from his cam­paign Web site. As well, the media has cov­ered this up — the video clip exists (above) but I can­not find a sin­gle main­stream news­pa­per that has reported on this.

What is Obama’s Civil­ian National Secu­rity Force? Is it Nazi Brown Shirts? An insti­tu­tion­al­ized ver­sion of ACORN, Pub­lic Allies, and some of his cult fol­low­ing? A state ver­sion of Saul Alinsky’s disciples?

But, more seri­ously, as he set out to cut the mil­i­tary, a con­sis­tent posi­tion until after his July 2nd announce­ment about cre­at­ing a “civil­ian national secu­rity force”, does he mean rebuild the mil­i­tary by cre­at­ing this par­al­lel Civil­ian National Secu­rity Force?

Charles Lemos writes in NoQuar­terUSA on July 20, 2008:

Is he ref­er­enc­ing the ATF, FBI, or DEA? Or some­thing new and dif­fer­ent say like the Defense of the Rev­o­lu­tion Brigades that they have in Cuba and Venezuela where neigh­bors spy on neigh­bors? Surely he can’t mean the US For­eign Ser­vice and the Peace Corps et al be funded in the bil­lions of dol­lars. What­ever he is ref­er­enc­ing it sounds like a dra­matic depar­ture from cur­rent prac­tice and cur­rent fund­ing. And why did it take the press so long to catch the dis­crep­ancy between the speech as deliv­ered and the pre­pared remarks? Why are the ref­er­ences in the tran­script to this deleted or omit­ted? Should we be wor­ried? He was rather emphatic about it so I doubt that he just got car­ried away and ad libbed it.

I admit that I do not hang on Obama’s every speech and glean through them with the a fine tooth comb but per­haps I should for the press is not doing its job. It is appar­ently in the busi­ness of unadul­ter­ated ado­ra­tion. If he is propos­ing some­thing new and dif­fer­ent, shouldn’t we be ask­ing ques­tions espe­cially since it sounds rather open-​ended and to be frank wor­ri­some for civil liberties.

Com­men­tors to Lemos’ arti­cle asked if this was to be our ver­sion of a Repub­li­can Guard (Ownaa). Another, Fred C. Dobbs, asks, “Kom­so­mols? Young Pio­neers? Spet­z­natz? Win­nie Man­dela Foot­ball Club? Patrice Lumumba Uni­ver­sity March­ing and Chow­der Soci­ety? Legion Etrangere?”

Ani next wrote in NoQuar­terUSA, Arro­gant Thing, You Make Everything…Horrid, on July 22, 2008:

I now under­stand Sen­a­tor Obama thinks our mil­i­tary isn’t enough and wants to employ a civil­ian national secu­rity force? Can you say Black­wa­ter? Does this scare any­one else?

Then, Rob­War­rior shared an exam­ple of Obama’s civil­ian national secu­rity force, in NoQuar­terUSA, The Case for David Fred­doso, on Sep­tem­ber 20, 2008:

How­ever, [David Fred­doso] who wrote a well researched book, made a mis­take. He dared to ques­tion the cho­sen one. So when he was sched­uled to appear on a Chicago radio show on Mon­day night, Obama’s min­ions went to work. The Obama action alert went to the e-​mails of his devoted fol­low­ers and future brown shirt wear­ing mem­bers of his Civil­ian National Secu­rity Force.

Included in the e-​mail was the following:

“David Fred­doso has made a career off dis­hon­est, extreme hate mon­ger­ing,” the email claimed. “And WGN appar­ently thinks this card-​carrying mem­ber of the right-​wing smear machine needs a big­ger plat­form for his lies and smears about Barack Obama — on the pub­lic airwaves.”

That’s not just lies, fab­ri­ca­tions or embell­ish­ments, it’s libel.

Obama’s thugs were instructed to inun­date WGN with phone calls, e-​mails and any­thing else to dis­rupt the Fred­doso appear­ance. Yes, they did the same thing a few weeks ago, when the same show booked Stan­ley Kurtz who is one of the few peo­ple actu­ally both­er­ing to find out what really hap­pened with the Chicago Annen­berg Challenge.

The show went on and Fred­doso made his case. And there wasn’t a hate­ful word spo­ken, despite the actions of Obama’s Chicago gang­sters. There is not a hate mon­ger­ing word in Freddoso’s book. Of course, they wouldn’t know that since they haven’t both­ered to read it.

Eas­tan McNeal dis­cussed at NoQuar­terUSA in Obama’s Civil­ian National Secu­rity Force in National Hor­ror 101 on Sep­tem­ber 30, 2008:

It may come to no sur­prise that a Civil­ian National Secu­rity Force (CNSF) like the one Obama sug­gests can be and have been pro­posed or imple­mented in places like Cuba, the Soviet Union, China, Venezuela, North Korea and East Ger­many. But we live in what is now con­sid­ered a coun­try that val­ues indi­vid­ual free­dom and free­dom of choices.

To make this con­cept even more dis­turb­ing, Obama has also called for greater inte­gra­tion between his CNSF and pub­lic 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 set­ting 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.

This sounds like coerced patri­o­tism for the lower and mid­dle class. Get out there and vol­un­teer for some­thing, kid, or we’ll have to shut down the library and charge you dou­ble for your books. Pri­vate schools, like the one Obama’s daugh­ters attend will be inher­ently exempt, of course. His girls will never be forced to take tar­get prac­tice lessons and patrol the bor­ders of Hyde Park, pro­tect­ing the locals from mod­er­ate low infor­ma­tion inter­lop­ers who may try to climb the gates for a bet­ter look onto how the other half lives. You know — like the One who.… today is run­ning for the right to con­script your kids into his brown shirt urban army.

From the com­ments of this post is the fol­low­ing com­ment by Soldier4Hillary and sev­eral follow-​up:

Soldier4Hillary | 2008-​09-​30 09:20:10 |

I read No Quar­ter every morn­ing before I leave for my appoint­ments for the day and out of all of the times I have done so this arti­cle has affected me the most.

“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.

I am done with the Demo­c­ra­tic party. Done. That one quote gives the impres­sion that were incom­pe­tent. That quote gives the impres­sion that we are all part of the “failed admin­is­tra­tion of the last 8 years and should be replaced”.

We can­not con­tinue to rely on our mil­i­tary in order to achieve the national secu­rity objec­tives we’ve set

Is he attempt­ing to state that we have failed to keep out coun­try safe? That we have failed in on our mis­sion? What “national secu­rity objec­tives that have been set where we dropped the ball? This is like a slap in the face. So what hap­pens to us when he gains office now that the Demo­c­ra­tic party has basi­cally stated we are no longer needed? We have law enforce­ment agen­cies already so what exactly is this “civil­ian force” that needs to be stronger than our cur­rent mil­i­tary and just as strongly funded? No one is going to fight on behalf of us if the Dems win if they are already plot­ting how to replace us.

I hon­estly do not know what the future will holds. It used to be wor­ry­ing about med­ical treat­ment and my cur­rent med­ical board I am going through but the more these peo­ple talk it seems I may have more to think about.

This plan for a civil­ian mil­i­tary goes against EVERYTHING I believe in. They need to go and stroll through the halls of Wal­ter Reed and tell them that they see that they haven’t achieved there “national secu­rity objec­tives”. Go to Land­stuhl and visit those there and tell them we haven’t achieved our goal. I am dis­gusted and pissed off. Peo­ple have sac­ri­ficed so many things and not once, not once can Obama open his mouth and say one good god­damn thing we have done. I am tired of read­ing this type of shit. We vol­un­teer for this. The same way peo­ple make the choice to become police offi­cers, fire­fight­ers etc etc. I am tired of peo­ple look­ing the other way and let­ting this shit fly.

Com­ment by Agust304 | 2008-​09-​30 23:48:21:

Sol­dier

You are so right on.

My brother-​in-​law is an Air Force vet like me. He is repub­li­can. My wife is old demo­c­rat. My kids are mostly inde­pen­dent in their vot­ing, as am I.

I do not see my choice to reject Obama as any­thing other than me exer­cis­ing my right to be a cit­i­zen who has an opin­ion and feelings.

One feel­ing I have is don’t mess with my kids. One opin­ion I have is I am not ashamed of my opinion.

Thanks for pip­ing in. I always like your stuff.

Com­ment by Teak­Wood­Kite | 2008-​10-​01 00:39:56

What “national secu­rity objec­tives that have been set where we dropped the ball?

That must sting like a slap in the face to all that serve.

What a Dum­b­Ass he is, Sargent…

While I nor­mally do not read or quote World­Net­Daily, Joseph Farah has also asked about Obama’s Civil­ian National Secu­rity Force. Writ­ing on July 15th he asks:

What does it mean?

If we’re going to cre­ate some kind of national force as big, pow­er­ful and well-​funded as our com­bined U.S. mil­i­tary forces, isn’t this rather a big deal?

I thought Democ­rats gen­er­ally believed the U.S. spent too much on the mil­i­tary. How is it pos­si­ble their can­di­date is seek­ing to cre­ate some kind of mas­sive but secret national police force that will be even big­ger than the Army, Navy, and Air Force put together?

Now, maybe he was mis­quoted by the Con­gres­sional Quar­terly and the Chicago Tri­bune. I guess it’s pos­si­ble. If so, you would think he would want to set the record straight. Maybe he mis­spoke. That has cer­tainly hap­pened before. Again, why wouldn’t the rest of my col­leagues show some curios­ity about such a major and, frankly, bone-​chilling proposition?

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 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?

So far, despite our attempts to find out, the Obama cam­paign is not talking.

.…

Who will Obama appoint to admin­is­ter this new “civil­ian national secu­rity force”? Where will the money come from? Where in the Con­sti­tu­tion does he see jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the fed­eral gov­ern­ment cre­at­ing such a domes­tic army?

The ques­tions are endless.

Yes, the ques­tions are really endless.

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As Obama has not been forth­com­ing in what he means by his “civil­ian national secu­rity force” and by his call to “rebuild the mil­i­tary” one has to look at sev­eral of the peo­ple he has hired. Word­Net­Daily writes in Camp Obama in Who is Jamil­lah Muham­mad:

The peo­ple that Obama has worked with over the years and now has involved in his cam­paign does help answer some ques­tions. It also reflects the dark side of Obama’s intent:

Sen. Barack Obama hired Jamil­lah Muham­mad, an early com­mu­nity orga­nizer friend in Chicago, to help train young vol­un­teers in the “ruth­less” agi­ta­tion tac­tics of the late social­ist orga­nizer Saul Alin­sky. The train­ing ses­sions have been held at some­thing called “Camp Obama” inside the campaign’s Chicago headquarters.

As Wold­Net­Daily explains, Jamil­lah Muham­mad “led anti-​military coun­sel­ing in Chicago dur­ing the Gulf war” and her Chicago Coali­tion of African-​American Reli­gious Women spon­sored “peace clubs”. Her agenda “dove­tails with Obama’s plan to slash mil­i­tary spend­ing and shift national resources to non­mil­i­tary ser­vice, cre­at­ing an army of young com­mu­nity orga­niz­ers, such as those who work for the rad­i­cal non­profit ACORN.

Jamil­lah Muham­mad served “as direc­tor of resource and pro­gram devel­op­ment for Jesse Jackson’s PUSH for Excel­lence in Chicago.” She pre­vi­ously “worked with Obama as a com­mu­nity orga­nizer in the hous­ing projects on Chicago’s South Side.”

“We have to sup­port our troops from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive than white peo­ple, because our sol­diers are going to return home to the same lousy sit­u­a­tion they left,” she said. “Patri­o­tism means some­thing all together dif­fer­ent for us.”

.…

Obama hired his old friend and col­league as a senior trainer at his Camp Obama, which has trained more than 2,000 young cam­paign vol­un­teers in the tech­niques of com­mu­nity orga­ni­za­tion orig­i­nally pop­u­lar­ized by rad­i­cal Saul Alin­sky in order to orga­nize vot­ers and help win the elec­tion. Alin­sky was a street agi­ta­tor who sought to “rub raw the sores of dis­con­tent” and pro­voke a social­ist rev­o­lu­tion in America.

Camp Obama’s direc­tor is Joce­lyn Woodards, another for­mer Obama col­league who worked with him early last decade at an ACORN sub­sidiary to help get out the vote dur­ing Carol Moseley-Braun’s Sen­ate campaign.

Woodards has taught campers to “be absolutely ruth­less” in turn­ing out the vote for Obama.

Obama recently told sup­port­ers in Nevada, a hotly con­tested state, to sharpen their elbows in the final days of the cam­paign. Con­front Repub­li­cans, he said, and “get in their faces.”

Amer­i­can Thinker is infor­ma­tive in their take on Obama’s civil­ian national secu­rity force. Lee Cary wrote back in July that Obama’s intent is “about turn­ing Amer­ica into one, giant, com­mu­nity organizer’s sand­box at enor­mous cost to taxpayers.”

The imme­di­ate con­text for that amaz­ing state­ment was a pre­view of parts of his plan to vastly expand com­mu­nity ser­vice oppor­tu­ni­ties for Amer­i­cans of nearly all ages. He said,

“Peo­ple of all ages, sta­tions, and skills will be asked to serve.”

Obama Youth? Not if our vote means anything!

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Sug­gested read­ing. There really isn’t that much, but if you have a few min­utes I sug­gest you read the sev­eral NoQuar­ter arti­cles I’ve ref­er­enced above (Charles Lemos Obama’s Civil­ian National Secu­rity Force, Ani Arro­gant Thing, You Make Everything…Horrid, National Hor­ror 101), sev­eral by Joseph Farah at World­Net­Daily (Obama on ‘civil­ian national secu­rity force’, Barack Obama’s $439 bil­lion secret, Barack Obama’s $439 bil­lion secret,‘Civil­ian national secu­rity force’ redux, About that ‘civil­ian national secu­rity force’, Who is Jamil­lah Muham­mad?), and the last arti­cle, by Lee Cary (Obama’s Civil­ian National Secu­rity Force. Two other views are by Jim Lind­gren at The Volokh Con­spir­acy, Fund­ing Barack Obama’s “civil­ian national secu­rity force.”, and Gate­way Pun­dit, Obama’s Plans For Civil­ian Secu­rity Force Rings Marx­ist Bell.

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