Is Obama's proposed "civilian national security force"?

In Nazi Germany it was the Gestapo. In Communist Russia it was the KGB.

Here it's called the Civilian National Security Force that people will have to volunteer for in order to get the welfare check, I mean the tax cut.

The CDF is nowhere near the same as Obies proposed Civilian National Police Force

The CDF coordinated bomb shelters and black out

Obie National Police Force will be as well funded as the military and operate within the borders to squelch unrest (dissention)

And Eddi get off the Koolaide

It is verifiable that it has always been Dems that have called for a draft

Obama is proposing more support here at home for the National Guard. Bush has depleted them by sending them to IRAQ!

This country used to have a civilian civil defense force. It was definitely in existence while we were fighting the Nazis. Your allegations make no sense.

Did he say something about reporting neighbors?

Vote for McCain and wait for a draft. And, btw, McCain's record of supporting veterans is really bad.

The video clip in question is a 20-second excerpt from a 30-minute speech given by Barack Obama just before Independence Day of this year. The omission of about 98.9% of the content might make one pause to wonder just what might have been left out. Instead, it's largely accompanied by assertions that it is proof that Obama is a fascist demagogue, a modern Hitler (complete with photoshopped Nazi propaganda posters) looking to create a secret paramilitary police force, and an out-of-control spender with another half trillion-dollar program to add to the budget all at once. But if you take a bit of time to look up the original source, you can find out just how much context really matters.

Video of the full speech is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df2p6867_pwand with the short clip taken starting from 16m44s in. Here's the text of that 20-second clip:

"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."

Now, ideally of course everyone should watch the entire speech and judge it on its merits, but it seems bad enough all on its own, and hard to imagine a justification for. Until you add as little as 10 extra seconds of preceding context; a single extra sentence before it:

"We're going to grow our foreign service, open consulates that have been shuttered, and double the size of the Peace Corps by 2011 to renew our diplomacy. We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that 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."

Well now, it turns out that Barack Obama was in the middle of explaining his plan for national service, which is outlined on his website at http://www.barackobama.com/issues/service/ The "civilian national security force" in the video refers to an expansion of existing publicly-funded programs (as well as a couple of news ones) such as the Peace Corps, in order to provide opportunities for the citizenry to become more civically involved, and in order to improve national security (read: foreign relations) by increasing diplomatic, non-military programs in America and around the world which better the image of America abroad, instead of focusing solely on military intervention (which can sometimes breed suspicion and resentment even with the best of motives).

Obama also strayed from the prepared text (which is available at http://www.barackobama.com/2007/12/05/obama_issues... and differs slightly from the content of the video) with an innocuous ad lib that someone edited for length... and agenda.

"Just as powerful and just as strong" takes on an entirely new light in this context: "just as effective and capable of improving American security through diplomacy as the military is martially". It doesn't portend a massive fascist gestapo force equipped with guns and bombs and a mandate to silence dissent.

And "just as well-funded" is clearly not meant to mean a dollar-for-dollar match to the half trillion-dollar National Defense Budget which supports an Armed Forces with between 2 and 3 million people in service fighting two wars, a monstrous R&D budget to develop the latest and greatest weaponry (plus a quarter-century-old missile defense system of dubious efficacy). Rather, that these programs (whose members would number in the low hundreds of thousands, not the millions) be recognized as an integral part of American foreign and domestic policy and accorded the full backing of the government and enough money to fulfill their potential--not the current situation of neglect. In fact, Obama's plan, as laid out by his campaign at http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/NationalServicePlan... is proposing an operating budget of 3.5 billion dollars, which is less than 1% of the defense budget.

So no, no "brownshirts", not spying on your friends and neighbors, no secret police force operating within the borders of the country at the behest of the president. Just motivated citizens working to improve communities domestically and abroad and improving America's image, and through it her security, through global outreach and diplomacy. And doing it on the cheap, to boot.

Welcome to the new socialist America, if Obama makes it to the White House.

would it make you feel better if he called it "border patrol"

such fake outrage

yes, and you have to join the black panther party to enlist....and they reject white applicants.