National Police Force?

Then-presidential-candidate Barack Hussein Obama said this in a Colorado Springs campaign event on 02 July 2008: “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.” Nothing could be weirder than this statement especially in light of the attitude Obama has had with respect to the nation's police forces, particularly during 2014...or could it?

This concerns not only the president but also Attorney General Holder, the nation's top law-enforcement official, who has shown the same disdain for police and made race a prime subject in his public utterances, even to labeling the society as “cowardly” with respect to the issue, whatever he meant by that description though he certainly meant “white” society. He and the president share the same habit of jumping to conclusions and making rash statements or taking untoward actions without knowing the facts about specific subjects concerning police matters.

Strong “national security forces” are an absolute necessity in any strictly socialistic government in which citizens are just cogs in the machinery run by the folks at the top, who arrive at the top through whatever means are deemed necessary, the devil take the hindmost. Such societies are sort of marked by the caste system flowing from a “them against us” mindset: black vs. white vs. Latino vs. oriental; rich vs. poor; educated vs. unschooled; south-side vs. north-side, etc.

This is not the American system, at least not yet—factions fighting each other until one is left standing and must keep the others in line, sort of like the Islamic model. It derives in a way from community-organizing, the pitting of one group against another for power or money or whatever privilege is at issue. The notion of mobilizing people for a specific purpose is not bad, even if it sometimes accounts for winners and losers, such as in mobilizing for elections, but organizing for ulterior motives that have to do with personal privilege above all else no matter the adverse impact on others is unacceptable.

Did Obama simply mean the National Guard or the Army Reserves (total strength 560,000+), essentially national security forces made up of civilians for handling floods and other natural emergencies, as well as occasionally for policing riots, looting and property-destruction such as in Ferguson, Missouri twice this year? Obviously not, since these were already in place in 2008 and are also responsible for out-of-country defensive tasks such as in Iraq and Afghanistan. Libya doesn't count since that was a “war of choice” waged by the president.

The U.S. Army numbers about 530,000 on active duty. Did Obama mean a civilian national security force just as strong as the army and costing just as much to train and operate? Besides, the U.S. military has proven that it achieves the national security objectives that have been set, so it is perfectly reliable. The country is not in mortal fear of any power on earth.

What would a civilian security force do and what entity would be devised to train it? The president is already the commander-in-chief of the entire military, though the military would never be expected to be used against the nation's citizens...or would it? Hitler managed to do that and was responsible for 11 million dead in the 1930s-40s. Weren't the dreaded Storm Troopers military? The SS (240,000 by 1929) operated the concentration camps. Hitler did have a secret police force called the Gestapo, more dreaded perhaps than the troopers.

Obama didn't elaborate upon either the need, makeup or the uses of a civilian national security force. Could it be that he was not aware of the National Guard and Army Reserves or the Air National Guard in 2008? Or...was he aware of these organizations and had something altogether different in mind? Who would decide what the domestic national security objectives would be? The Congress would handle the entire matter if the U.S. Constitution is obeyed. The days of feared militias, state and otherwise, have long since passed, and a civilian national security force is sort of out of the question.

So...who knows what candidate Obama had in mind? Given his well-documented antagonism (never mind his ceaseless flowery bloviating) for local police forces, perhaps he meant the nationalizing of every force and sheriff's department in the country with—yep—the president as chief-in-chief. That would be just the way to keep the cogs in place, with water-boarding a useful tool...a sort of Fidel Castro approach.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark