July 12, 2008

Barack Obama's "civilian national security force" (????)

Back on July 2, Barack Obama read his "public service" address, and it contained this line that hasn't received much notice:

"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."

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.

And, of course, there's the creepy nature of his proposal, but nothing new there.

UPDATE: VOA News also has the BHO quote here. You can hear the quote at around the 16 minute mark of the video below. As discussed here, the quote is missing from the remarks as prepared for delivery as printed in the Denver Post and the WSJ. Why he'd say something in his speech that was different from the prepared remarks isn't clear, and it will be interesting to see which version the campaign puts on their website, if they ever do put it on their site.

UPDATE 2: Also see this discussion of the funding for whatever BHO was proposing. And see these:

Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel want mandatory community service?; contradicts earlier statements; 100 hours/year in college

Obama spins Civilian National Security Force as for Iraq rebuilding

Brooks Jackson/FactCheck spins Obama's Civilian National Security Force

Posted to Politics at July 12, 2008 07:41 PM