Obama's YouTube Defense Talk 'Bizarre,' Analyst Says

Cybercast News Service (CNSNews.com) ^ | March 4, 2008 | Evan Moore

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

(CNSNews.com) - Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is facing renewed criticism regarding his national security policies as he continues his campaign for his party's presidential nomination.

In a YouTube video Obama made for a liberal pacifist organization last year, the senator called for major cuts in defense spending, slowing the development of future combat systems, and cutting investments in America's ballistic missile defense program.

Some conservatives have expressed surprise at the degree of Obama's proposals on the video, and this past weekend, Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-N.Y.) campaign released an ad criticizing Obama's alleged national security inexperience and trumpeting her as the person who could deftly manage emergency global crises.

In his video, Obama repeats his support for ending the Iraq War, saying, "I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat system. ...

"I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons," Obama says in the video. "To seek that goal, I will not develop new nuclear weapons. I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material, and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals."

Obama also promises in the video to institute an independent defense priorities board to ensure that the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) is not used as a vehicle to justify unnecessary spending.

The video is posted on the official "Obama '08" campaign's YouTube channel but not in the BarackObama.com Web site's video section. The "Obama '08" channel labels the video "Obama-Caucus4Priorities."

Defense cuts

Caucus4Priorities.org, also called Caucus for Priorities, was a campaign of Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities (BLSP), which is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.

It describes its mission as follows: "To change US budget priorities to reflect a national commitment to education, healthcare, energy independence, job training and deficit reduction - at no additional taxpayer expense - by eliminating funding for unneeded Cold War era weapons systems."

And the specific campaign, Caucus for Priorities, describes its mission as follows: "To redirect 15% of the Pentagon's discretionary budget away from obsolete Cold War weapons towards education, healthcare, job training, alternative energy development, world hunger, deficit reduction."

The BLSP advocates reducing America's stockpile of nuclear weapons to less than 1,000 warheads; reducing the National Missile Defense program to a basic research program; cutting spending on platforms like the F-22 Raptor, the Virginia-class Submarine, the V-22 Osprey airplane/helicopter hybrid, the DDG-1000 destroyer, and the Army's Future Combat System.

Also, the group advocates reducing America's force structure by eliminating two Air Force fighter wings and one aircraft carrier battle-group.

The $60 billion that could conceivably be reused as a result of BLSP's proposed cuts would then be diverted into other initiatives, according to a proposal on the group's website, such as children's health programs, modernizing schools, alternative energy research, budget deficit reduction, veterans' health care, and to "alleviate the global challenges of poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, disease, and disaster."

Sensible Priorities reported before the Iowa Caucuses that Obama supports reinvesting $8 billion of current defense spending.

Sensible Priorities cites a report from a former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, Lawrence Korb, which says that such reductions "would make our military stronger, allowing our forces to focus on the weapons, training, and tactics they need to do their jobs and defend our nation."

Furthermore, the BLSP urges eliminating pork project earmarks in the Defense budget.

According to an analysis of the FY2008 budget by Taxpayers for Common Sense, Obama appropriated $2 million for "nano-medical technologies research" at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champlain in the Defense Appropriations Bill.

Obama publicly disclosed his earmark requests via press release, which can be accessed on his Senate Web site.

Obama's campaign press campaign office did not return repeated requests for comment on this story. However, his defense and foreign policy positions are available on his campaign Web site.

Conservative criticism

In an interview with Cybercast News Service, Baker Spring, a national security research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, described Obama as "somebody who's a mouthpiece for arms control advocacy groups that probably put this litany of commitments in front of him, and he more or less read them without thinking."

Spring said Obama's proposed cuts in missile defense spending would be "a profoundly destabilizing decision [which] basically says that any state - or, for that matter, non-state actor - that wants to attack the United States, he gets the free first shot, including with weapons of mass destruction."

Regarding Obama's promise to reform the QDR process, Spring said, "Obviously, necessary and unnecessary is, to some degree, in the eye of the beholder. I don't think that any administration would put out a Quadrennial Defense Review that would explicitly endorse unnecessary programs.

"In a sense, Sen. Obama is, in his comment, is so logically contradictory, that he is saying that he is going to take preemptive action to prevent his own administration, assuming he's elected, from issuing a report in terms of the future U.S. defense structure, that would include unnecessary and wasteful programs," said Spring. "It strikes me as a little bizarre, to put it mildly."

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

PING!

Dated, but relevant.

[Always Right]

Leave it to Obama to bring back the ever popular Carter doctrine of unilateral disarmament.

[littlehouse36]

This video is a must-see. A transcript cannot capture the eerieness with which Obama promises to disarm our military.

[RexBeach]

So, I see Mr. Obama thinks that everyone in the world thinks the way he does. How nice. Now everyone can get along with one another and live peacefully ever after.

Apparently, Mr. Obama has no sense of the past, at least when it comes to the history of warfare.

Hell, if it weren’t for war, there wouldn’t be any United States.

The way he talks, it sounds like it’s 1965.

He sounds like a cross between Jimmy Carter and Lyndon Johnson.

God save us from such fools.

PS: Mr. McCain better get to practicing his speechifying. His speech last night was simply dreadful.

[LegalEagle61]

Yes his plan is to ultimately leave us as sitting ducks...his followers are like zombies hanging on his every word and being fooled by his serpent tongue...(hmmm seems to me the Bible warns about following such wolves in sheeps clothing...)

[littlehouse36]

“PS: Mr. McCain better get to practicing his speechifying.”

Maybe we could slip some Rev. Wright cassettes into McCain’s walkman?

[Truth29]

He would cut the Defense programs. He would cut the Space program. He would withdraw from Iraq no mater the consequences. He would only talk to our enemies. He would divert massive resources to social program and “education.” He would preside over the demise of the US IMO.

[RexBeach]

Couldn’t hurt. :)

[syriacus]

Leave it to Obama to bring back the ever popular Carter doctrine of unilateral disarmament.

Let's hope Carter's Habitat for Humanity can build enough homes in the US to house the invading forces.

[Aria]

McCain’s speech made W look like Reagan.

A horrid speaker with a long and mostly valiant resume v. a great speaker with a frightening and short resume.

Thanks to the youtube culture this doesn’t bode so well.

[Jeff Head]

Despite all that he says and does, you have these idolizers...

Nothing you can say or do will convince these people otherwise...


Because I am the one they and I have been waiting for...and I am lovin' it.

THE AUDACITY OF TRUTH ABOUT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA

Those wild eyed people represent the millions of Americans raised in the government day-care and indoctrination centers we call public schools who did not have, or would not listen to, parents and others who tried to counterweight the garbage they heard at school...who have been raised on 60 second sound bite time spans and know no better.

You have other tens of millions on the dole who will vote for him regardless of position because he promises to keep pilfering the public largess for them.

Still othes of millions will vote for him simply because he is black.

Other millions will vote for him because they know exactly who he is and what he represents and agree with his anti-American positions.

The first three are all what is termed, useful idiots, a term coined by Lenin for the dupes he got to support him.

Against this it is left to us to educate, arouse, and amass the tens of millions of Americans who understand and hold fast to the foundational principles our constitutional republic rests upon...many of them the bitter, rural Americans clinging to their guns and religion that Obama so arrogantly spoke of.

[2harddrive]

An Obama + our Nation = Abomination!

[Jeff Head]

Obamination.

[GunRunner]

Does anyone know the alternative to "hair-trigger alert"? It sounds like a made-up liberal term like "cop killer" bullets and "assault weapons".

The only place I've seen the term used is by pacifists like Ralph Nader and on liberal sites.

[peeps36]

Berry should cut spending that is being wasted on illegal immigrants. He could increase military spending with the money saved on education, medical and incarceration costs. I’m sick of the idiot politicians who act as if there’s nothing wrong with wasting billions on illegal criminals.

[Thunder90]

I wonder why Vladimir Putin admires this guy... This is why.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Very relevant...

Related thread:

New agreement lets US strike any country from inside Iraq (Postwar Iraq takes shape)

[PhilDragoo]

[Mike Bates]