Forbidden Donut

In all honesty, I don't think anyone knows for sure. It was something he mentioned in a speech, but I don't think it was part of his platform. From the context of his speech, I don't think it was necessarily a defense force in the military sense. I believe he meant more along the lines of the role of our national guard only without any foreign military responsibilities, so like...helping areas affected by natural disasters and such. But like I said, I really have no clue for sure.

His new chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, wrote a book in 2006 called "The Plan: Big Ideas for America". http://www.amazon.com/Plan-Big-Ideas-America/dp/1586484125/
One of his ideas was about a mandatory civil service plan so maybe Obama likes the idea and is thinking about it in such a way. Emanuel talks about it in this interview on his book:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0B7dOQwKm0
The video maker is biased against the plan, but it is a universal civil defense training for Americans to do for 3 months sometime between the ages of 18-25. I like the idea and I like how he said it would give Americans a common experience of working for their country. *edit: he says this in the longer version, found here http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/video.aspx?v=e4qG6UIr8z*
However, I don't really think its necessary. In Israel they need every able body to be trained for their survival. We have the luxury of not needing that.

In response: In Taiwan, they required military service for 2 years. And while they are actually in the Armed Forces, most of them do civil service such as road repair, emergency aid, national guard, crisis control, water patrol, etc. I, myself, believe it is highly valuable as it does bring a sense of unity to the men in service that stays with the general public long after it, my father being a prime example. It also heightens national pride and community service. And no, I don't believe we need those 2 years of required service for protection, for the Chinese threat is as empty as Paris Hilton's brain. China considers Taiwan a part of itself and want to take over it politically for economic benefits. An invasion of Taiwan would end up costing more than it's worth. They know that and we know that, so they keep just enough pressure on all the right countries to not recognize Taiwan as independent to keep status quo. Anyways, that's more than I wanted to say about that. Basically, my point is that military service in Taiwan doesn't really mean military service unless you choose to stay and work in the military after 2 years. It closely resembles what you (Steven), described in your post. I am impartial either way, but what I know is that such an idea is not about necessity. It's about teaching people how to not be assholes to each other, a lesson that's no longer taught by parents. While argue you may, my post is about how this works in a different country, so I'm not saying what would happen here in this defense force. I'm only suggesting a possible insight on the manner.

I assume it is obvious without me saying so, but I'll say it anyway: I am 100% opposed to this if it is intended to be a requirement regardless of what type of work they will be charged with.

Pretty sure he meant StormTroopers

It would be one thing if he was trying to augment the military to do something domestically, but in reality you already have the national guard to respond to disasters so I don't see the need.

Increasing the military's numbers to better respond to a disaster is one thing. Making a separate department that is equally as well funded as the military is now... well that's different. Where would the money come from? Where would all that new money go? Assuming he only cuts the current military budget in half to make it work, he's giving this new organization 400 billion a year. Only about a quarter of that goes to current US military salaries. That's a lot of extra money for a "Civilian Defense Force."

If the goal is to create a group of volunteers to help out why not just expand the Peace Corps and Americorps? Those two groups have everything in place already. I think the Peace Corp is largely a joke, but Americorp has some hope in that regard.

I just can't see a group like this being useful for anything other then community service. Not for disasters or emergencies.

Who would they answer to?

In response to this, Rahm's idea, which is what we're discussing now, was to "require" service of some kind in order to get a certain amount of grant money for college. High schools around the country already require community service of their students to graduate with little complaint, but that's because if you don't like it you can leave of course. The idea that it would become a mandatory thing stems from the idea that colleges would raise prices to compensate for the grant money.

just fyi.

Apart from you asking a lot of (legitimate) questions that don't have answers yet, and shouldn't be assumed to have answers quite yet since the guy hasn't even been inaugurated and has bigger things to worry about when he is besides this little gem he mentioned once and which happens to roughly coincide with something his Chief of Staff wrote about years ago, I have just one problem in that whole post. What's your problem with the Peace Corps. While it might not serve a crucial role for those it is meant to serve, I think the more important role it plays is with the men and women who are a part of it. It is a fairly cheap to run program that helps people a little bit and teaches young people a shitload about the world. What's funny about that?

I likes teh peace corpse.

I don't have any thing against the Peace Corp, in theory. I think it has to the potential to do a lot of great things. I think it could be a valuable teaching tool. I just think they go about it in the wrong way.

The goal of the Peace Corp is basically to teach skills to developing countries so that they can become more self sufficient. The problem, the majority of the people going into the Peace Corp are young ideological, yet unskilled students with nothing practical to teach.

Like I said, the concept is admirable but I think that the more productive method of doing things to achieve the stated goal would be to take those funds used to send over unskilled kids and instead hire people with the knowledge and training needed to impart the requested skills to whatever country they may be in.

The peace corps is budgeted 343 million dollars for FY2008-2009 and employs 35,000 people and 130 sub-groups with those funds. At a cost of $10,000/year/employee I think it happens to be one of the most efficiently run federally funded programs. The skills being taught are things like how to plant food and watch crop cycles. How to prevent disease and put on a condom. The hardest part of it, the only thing I wouldn't 100% trust a college kid with is the actual teaching part. I'm not sure if you can immerse a kid in a new culture and expect them to be able to effectively communicate modernity with the population. But I do know that when that college kid gets back he's going to be much better adjusted and he's going to have a much more accurate world-view than most of his peers. I think that alone is worth it. If we manage to teach some Africans how to feed their kids and have fewer of them, then that's good too.