This article was posted July 13, 2008. Be sure to read the update which follows.
As always where Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is concerned, there’s more to the story than immediately meets the eye. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) hit the nail right on the head during the February 21, 2008, Democratic presidential debate at the University of Texas in Austin—Sen. Obama is nothing more than “change you can xerox”.
Blogger Lonewacko (h/t Hot Air) recently wrote about a “line that hasn’t received much notice” from Sen. Obama’s July 2, 2008, “public service” address delivered at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs.
The “line” in question was sparsely reported (see Note below), but was related by the Chicago Tribune’s John McCormick:
“We cannot continue to rely only 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.”
The source of Sen. Obama’s idea and inspiration for his “public service”—surprise! surprise!—comes from at least one someone else.
In the July 7, 2008, Defense News, John T. Bennett and Tobias Naegele reported that during the “most extensive interview to date exclusively on military matters”,
Obama “stopped short of saying he would ask some members of the Pentagon’s current civilian leadership to stay on past his inauguration if he wins the election in November. But without prompting, he went on to praise [Secretary of Defense Robert Gates] in a way that suggested he could ask him to stick around.
Ever the “original thinker”, Bennett and Naegele wrote of Sen. Obama:
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.”
And there you have it. A presumably original, well-thought-out plan from the Obama campaign and all its expert advisers, made on the stump by Sen. Obama, simply turns out to be more of the same old, same old Obama. While pandering to conservatives or anyone else who will listen for all he’s worth, Sen. Obama deftly swoops up someone else’s thoughts—and speeches—to prop up his own obvious inadequacies.
Lonewacko expressed the situation clearly:
What the Sam Hill? There’s nothing at his Service page (barackobama.com/issues/service) discussing anything near such a program. He wants to increase the size of Americorps, create a “Homeland Security Corps”, create other specialized groups, and give more power and equipment to the Reserves and Guard. But, considering that the U.S. military budget is nearly half a trillion dollars and they’ve got bunker busters and nuclear submarines and things like that, one might expect some sort of inkling of a plan.
Exactly! And now we know why there’s nothing on his official website. To find Sen. Obama’s “some sort of a plan” regarding a “civilian national security force”, as well as many other aspects Obama mentioned in his July 2, 2008, “public service” address, you’d have to track down speeches dating from more than a year ago delivered by none other than SecDef Gates:
Kristin Roberts, Gates calls for rebuilding of U.S. development agencies, Reuters, July 18, 2007. Landon Lecture (Kansas State University), DefenseLink, November 26, 2007. Gates: No Immediate Military Threat from Iran, NPR, January 17, 2008. Speech, Center for Strategic and International Studies, January 26, 2008. Opening Statement to the House Armed Services Committee (Washington, D.C.), DefenseLink, April 15, 2008.
Note: Besides McCormick (whose report was picked up by AARP), Jim Malone of Voice of America News also reported it. The excerpt was also posted July 3, 2008, on at least one My.BarackObama community blog.
Curiously, Sen. Obama’s pre-address prepared remarks published July 2, 2008, by Denver’s ABC Channel 7 News and the Rocky Mountain News do not show this passage.
Question: Why? or Why not?
UPDATE: On July 16, 2008, Sean Robins posted “Obama: ‘New Era of Service’ 7/2/08 speech: ‘Civilian National Security Force’ genesis” complete with links to a video to the entire speech (26+ minutes) on YouTube, the prepared text of the speech, and a breakdown of the speech in “prepared” and “marked-up” versions, at Free Republic.
A comment following the breakdown by bobmbx provides an interesting observation:
A much better model of what BO proposes is much closer than Germany. Just look south, towards Venezuela and you’ll find the “Armed Forces of Cooperation”, which performs duties such as:
“Therefore, this one component fulfills the function to offer security and to defend the sovereignty of the Venezuelan national territory, as much internally as throughout its borders, working jointly with the Army, the Navy and Aviation. At the same time, it participates respectively in operative in internal security in collaboration with the state and municipal police bodies under the direction of the Ministry of the Popular Power for the Defense and the Ministry of the Popular Power of the Interior and Justice. Consequently, in case of disturbances or sackings, it acts to dissuade and to control the protests and other disorders public.
“At the present time, the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, has arranged for the National Guard to collaborate with the citizens in activities of cooperation, protection, security, defense and also in social programs or missions to benefit the population, according to the Constitution of 1999.”
Social programs at the point of the gun. Hmmmm……
Although bobmbx did not provide the source for his quote, it was found in the Wikipedia article on the Venezuelan National Guard, specifically coming from Article 329 of Venezuela’s National Constitution. The “Armed Forces of Cooperation” (Fuerzas Armadas de Cooperación – FAC) is the actual name for the Venezuelan National Guard.
Digging deeper, RBO found two related Venezuelan newspaper articles.
In the first, published August 20, 2007, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez “defended his proposed changes to the Venezuelan Armed Forces, arguing that the military should not only be involved in national defense but it should also have permanent participation in communities and at the service of what he calls ‘popular war of resistance,’ in which the military and the general population would be mobilized together for national defense.”
In the second article, published February 22, 2008, Chávez announced the founding of the National Council of Citizen Security and Regional Citizen Security Coordination, integrating—in effect nationalizing—”state and local police squads … into a comprehensive national force based on the principals of social inclusion, disarmament, respect for human rights, penal improvement, and the ‘co-responsibility’ of a mobilized citizenry that works in team with the state.”
Digging down even deeper, RBO looked for the phrase “mobilized citizenry” in relationship to Venezuela and discovered that the 2006 World Social Forum convened in “the country with the most mobilized citizenry and the most progressive government in Latin America – Venezuela.”
Now it’s time for an RBO quiz:
In reference to Sen. Obama, where have we heard numerous references to Venezuela?
Give up? It’s long-time Obama supporter, employer and friend William Ayers. Yes. THAT Billy Ayers, the unrepentant leader of the 1960s domestic terrorist Weather Underground Organization. The Ayers-Venezuala connection with Venezuelan-style “social justice” and the Ayers-Chavez connection have both been discussed at length by RBO contributors Pundita, Dr. Stephen Diamond, and John Batchelor. Also see RW’s backgrounder on Obama and domestic terrorist, Weatherman Bill Ayers.
It’s not much of a stretch, after you have read up on the Obama-Ayers connection, to see where Venezuela, “the country with the most mobilized citizenry and the most progressive government in Latin America”, fits in as a role model for a future Obama administration, complete with a “civilian national security force.”
Also see:
“Another Barack Obama Gaffe: A Civilian Army?” by PascoGOP
Our citizens may be deceived for awhile, and have been deceived; but as long as the presses can be protected, we may trust to them for light.--Thomas Jefferson.
Who would have thought that the Fourth Reich would materialize in the USA, instead of Der Vaterland?
America is a pulp culture of consumers. Obama and the Democrat/socialists are on the verge of turning the USA into the United Socialists of America.
Hugo Chavez is buying weapons of mass destruction in Russia this week, with money earned from his Citgo stations in the U.S.
This is nothing less than creating critical mass for a Chicago-style patronage army on a national scale. Expect the welfare cases and well-connected to benefit. And, it has facist overtones that mimick reality here in Chicago.