Defense Policy
In a speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in April 2007, Sen. Obama advocated the expansion of the military to include an additional sixty-five thousand army soldiers and twenty-seven thousand marines. He also called for an increase in the number of Arabic speakers in the military.
In Obama’s 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, he wrote, “It's time we acknowledge that a defense budget and force structure built principally around the prospect of World War III makes little strategic sense.”
As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Obama introduced the Cooperative Proliferation Detection, Interdiction Assistance, and Conventional Threat Reduction Act of 2006. That act, which was incorporated into the Department of State Authorities Act of 2006 and signed into law, allows for the destruction of surplus and unsecured weapons, which Obama said “make attractive targets for terrorists.”
Obama said private security contractors like Blackwater USA should not be "rogue militia, roaming the country shooting without justification and without consequences." He called for increased accountability for contractors and wrote in an op-ed in the Chicago Sun-Times. that U.S. "national interests are threatened when these companies act on the country's behalf without having to answer to Americans. Instead of winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis, we've made them angry and possibly fueled support for the counterinsurgency that is keeping us stuck in Iraq."
In May 2008, Obama voted in favor of an amendment to expand the veterans' benefits program . That bill, which will increase education benefits for soldiers who served in Iraq, passed.
As Obama was elected in 2004, he does not have a voting record on military operations in the Gulf War, Kosovo, or in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. He has been critical of the war in Iraq, but was not yet in office at the time that the Iraq War resolution was passed.
In a speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in April 2007, Sen. Obama advocated the expansion of the military to include an additional sixty-five thousand army soldiers and twenty-seven thousand marines. He also called for an increase in the number of Arabic speakers in the military.
In Obama’s 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, he wrote, “It's time we acknowledge that a defense budget and force structure built principally around the prospect of World War III makes little strategic sense.”
As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Obama introduced the Cooperative Proliferation Detection, Interdiction Assistance, and Conventional Threat Reduction Act of 2006. That act, which was incorporated into the Department of State Authorities Act of 2006 and signed into law, allows for the destruction of surplus and unsecured weapons, which Obama said “make attractive targets for terrorists.”
Obama said private security contractors like Blackwater USA should not be "rogue militia, roaming the country shooting without justification and without consequences." He called for increased accountability for contractors and wrote in an op-ed in the Chicago Sun-Times. that U.S. "national interests are threatened when these companies act on the country's behalf without having to answer to Americans. Instead of winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis, we've made them angry and possibly fueled support for the counterinsurgency that is keeping us stuck in Iraq."
In May 2008, Obama voted in favor of an amendment to expand the veterans' benefits program . That bill, which will increase education benefits for soldiers who served in Iraq, passed.
As Obama was elected in 2004, he does not have a voting record on military operations in the Gulf War, Kosovo, or in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. He has been critical of the war in Iraq, but was not yet in office at the time that the Iraq War resolution was passed.
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