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By Maj. Gen. Jerry R. Curry (ret'd)
CurryforAmerica.com
“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we have set. We have got to have a civilian national security force that is just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded,” said Barak Hussein Obama on July 2, 2008. His words require a bit of translating, however.
In plain English, President Obama has set national security objectives which he has yet to share with the American people. According to his statement he is convinced that the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard, constituted as they are, are either unreliable or unable to accomplish the national security objectives he has chosen. So, he intends to ask Congress to authorize, fund and build a civilian national security force that is, “just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded,” as America’s military forces.
To be as strong as our current armed forces, Obama’s civilian army will have to be able to match the Army and Marines tank for tank, missile for missile, and battalion for battalion. It will have to match the Navy and Coast Guard ship for ship, and the Air Force fighter plane for fighter plane and bomber for bomber.
His civilian force’s congressionally approved budget will require appropriations that match the Pentagon’s current budget level dollar for dollar. According to the Congressional Budget Office, Obama expects to fund his private security force with a $6 billion allocation over the next five years. Though that is not equivalent to the nation’s current military budget allocation, it is still not a paltry sum.
That is how we must interpret Obama’s words if we take them and him at face value. But does Obama really mean what he said or was it just campaign rhetoric? If it was only rhetoric, there should be no effort to follow up with concrete proposals or appropriations.
So what is one to think about H.R. 1388, Obama’s National Civilian Security Force bill which is slowly working its way around Capital Hill? It is formally named the “Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act.” It provides for uniforms to be worn by the young volunteers (up to 250,000 of them) and for the establishment of a 4-year “public service academy” to train new public service leaders. From this it is reasonable to conclude that there must be fire somewhere in the middle of all of Obama’s rhetorical smoke.
Where is there an historical example of a nation having a civilian national security force that rivals the size of its military forces? Why, in the early 1930s Germany, of course. The force was called the “Brown Shirts” and was used to bully, intimidate, and indoctrinate individuals and political parties that opposed the German government’s policies, in much the same manner as ACORN’s (The Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now) thugs for hire do in Chicago today.
We can safely assume that such an organization would take its orders directly from the President just as the Brown Shirts did in Germany and just as do Obama’s current White House Czars today. Left alone to develop and mature on its own, such a national security force could prove to be quite dangerous to our Constitution and to the liberty and freedom of all Americans.
Only the U.S. Military could control such a civilian security force if it went rogue, and that would have to be by brute force. For the Administration to counter the military’s use of force, it would have to somehow subvert the military so that while its forces are declining in power, the brown shirts are increasing in power.
In the process, the President would become a law and a power unto himself – whom no one could control -- with a civilian army or security force readily at hand to do his personal bidding, unchecked by Congress or the Courts. Eventually there would no longer be the separation of powers that our Founders so wisely established. And as history teaches us, under such a scenario the President would become a de facto dictator.
But the descendants of those who survived Valley Forge, Gettysburg, and Bastogne are neither easily fooled nor easily misled. While a few misguided politicians may stupidly or maliciously agree to form a sizeable civilian national security force and even plot to upset the constitutional system we so cherish, they will not succeed.
Having spent most of my life in the U.S. Army,
much of it in foxholes, I can say without hesitation that the
U.S. military will not stand idly by while the
Constitution is being abrogated and destroyed. So let us remain vigilant and
never forget, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”