A video of a 2006 interview with now-Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel for
president-elect Barack Obama reveals plans for mandatory induction for all young
adults into a civilian "force."
"If you're worried about, are you going to have to do 50 jumping jacks, the
answer is yes," Emanuel told the interviewer, a reporter who was podcasting for
the New York Daily News at the time.
WND reported last weekend when the official website for Obama, Change.gov,
announced he would "require" all middle school through college students to
participate in community service programs.
However, after a flurry of blogs protested children being drafted into Obama's
proposed youth corps, officials softened the website's wording.
Originally, under the tab "America Serves," Change.gov read, "President-Elect
Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and
will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in under served schools, as
well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps.
"Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan
to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and
100 hours of community service in college every year," the site announced.
WND previously reported on a video of a marching squad of Obama youth and
Obama's "civilian national security force," which he said in July would be just
as powerful and well-funded as the U.S. military.
Now comes the Emanuel video, which has been embedded here:
In the interview, Emanuel was questioned whether participants in the proposed
force would live in barracks.
"Somewhere between the age of 18 to 25 you will do three months of training. You
can do it at some point in your college time," he said. "There can be nothing
wrong with all Americans having a joint, similar experience of what we call
civil defense training or civil service."
Emanuel said the planned requiring service "will give people a sense of what it
means to be an American."
He said, of course, the plan at that point was flexible.
"We propose three months [but] at the end of the day [if] someone says it should
be four . I'm not going sit here and hold up [plans]," Emanuel said.
When the reporter questioned the commitment, Emanuel responded, "Guess what. We
have a lot more challenges. We are going to need a lot to do it. If you're
worried about are you going to have to do 50 jumping jacks the answer is yes."
He chuckled at the reporters concerns.
"Rather than figure out if whether you take a train ride or a barrack. . Think
of it this way, it will be a common experience.
"There will be a body of citizens who are ready, capable and trained," he said.
But the plan, especially its demand that Americans participate in a domestic
"force," has been raising questions.
The blogger Gateway Pundit called Obama's plan the "creation of his Marxist
youth corps," and DBKP commented, "'Choosing' to serve should be approved by
parents - not required by the government. No amount of good intentions can
sugar-coat words like 'mandatory,' 'compulsory' or 'required.'"
Emanuel uses his book, "The Plan: Big Ideas for America," to specify that he
would propose, for all Americans ages 18 to 25, that they "serve their country
by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation and
community service."
Obama, meanwhile, also has yet to clarify what he meant during his July "Call to
Service" speech in Colorado Springs in which he insisted the U.S. "cannot
continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security
objectives we've set" and needs a "civilian national security force."
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