2008-11-12

Obama's Dignity Battalions

I picked this up from Hot Air, by way of Ace of Spades. It's a three minute interview with Rahm Emanuel in which he discusses his perception of this Civilian Defense Force.


Now, I'm no conspiracy theorist, but Emanuel seems pretty focused on this concept of a civilian paramilitary force. He tries to make it sound innocuous, but you look at the pool of people from which he wants to draw this force (college kids) it's almost as if he wants the cultural opposite from the people who enlist in the military. People more ideologically aligned with Democrats trained and armed. these are the same Democrats who opposed the draft for our military, but see it as useful tool for building a civilian force with the same amount of training, the same weaponry, the same skills. To "teach them what it means to be American",in Emanuel's words.

Now for those of you too young to remember the Dignity Battalions, it was a trained paramilitary force in Panama who owed allegiance to Manuel Noriega. Noriega shuttled them around the country during elections to vote multiple times in May 1989. When the election didn't go the way Noriega wanted it to go, he sent DIgnity Battalion members to beat the crap out of the President-elect Guillermo (Billy) Ford with lead pipes. The attack was so blatant, a CNN cameraman captured it and beamed it around the world.

Hugo Chavez has his own Popular Defense Units, civilian supporters of Chavez, trained in military techniques, who have been used to quell protests in Venezuela, some using gunfire on unarmed civilian opponents.

The Left admires Chavez' brand of socialism, his ability to shut down opposition media and now his solution to crush dissent. I'm just sayin'....

I thought ya'all'd like to discuss this one.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you think that his religious background (e.g. Orthodox Jew) might play some role in his views on civil defense? It sounds like he is proposing something at least someone akin to what the Israeli citizens complete (obviously not as long, maybe not as many options of ways to serve, etc.).

Anonymous said...

Ooops. I meant "somewhat" not "someone". Hopefully you got the idea anyway.

Jonn Lilyea said...

A civil defense organization in a small country like Israel makes sense becaue of things like...well the Yom Kippur War. We're not surrounded by enemies that can attack us under the cover of darkness. We already have a National Guard, we have FEMA, we have police and fire departments.