Obama Tells UN What it Wants to Hear
But actions speak louder than words, Mr. President.
President Obama addressed the United Nations today with the confidence of a world leader, although some would argue that he has yet to display competence in the area of actual international leadership:
Each of these problems demands urgent attention. But they are also symptoms of a broader problem – the failure of our international system to keep pace with an interconnected world. We have not invested adequately in the public health capacity of developing countries. Too often, we have failed to enforce international norms when it’s inconvenient to do so. And we have not confronted forcefully enough the intolerance, sectarianism, and hopelessness that feeds violent extremism in too many parts of the globe.
Fellow delegates, we come together as United Nations with a choice to make. We can renew the international system that has enabled so much progress, or allow ourselves to be pulled back by an undertow of instability. We can reaffirm our collective responsibility to confront global problems, or be swamped by more and more outbreaks of instability. For America, the choice is clear. We choose hope over fear. We see the future not as something out of our control, but as something we can shape for the better through concerted and collective effort. We reject fatalism or cynicism when it comes to human affairs; we choose to work for the world as it should be, as our children deserve it to be.
President Obama pulled off this high profile speech without a “reset button” crisis, and for that, I think we can all be grateful; but of course, I have some concerns with what I found tucked in between his carefully placed soundbites.
What worries me isn’t his declaration that we aren’t at war with Islam (we aren’t,) or that we have a humanitarian duty to help countries less fortunate than ours (we do,) but his incorporation of transnational legal theory—albeit in bits and pieces—to bolster these ideas.
International norms govern behavior in general, but what we’ve seen from Barack Obama, his backers, and his Administration officials is something beyond general governance. They use buzzwords and references to faith in institutions as soft reenforcement of the idea that to create order from chaos, we need to first create an international ecosystem of rules, norms, and universal enforcement that is above criticism or dissent.
The last thing that comes to my mind when I think of President Obama is “above criticism.”
You can read the full transcript here, via the Washington Post.
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Comments
I hate to sound crass, but seriously does anyone even listen to a word this lying prick says any more?
Lying fascist prick is more correct.
I stand corrected
What’s the point of this post? “President Obama addressed the United Nations today with the confidence of a world leader…”
The point of this post, I believe, is that this guy is a blithering idiot who constantly leaks diarrhea from his mouth, pandering to his base with vapid Marxist talking points without any intent of actually delivering on any of the outrageously ignorant bullshit that he spews. But hey, that’s just what I got out of it.
I’d like to see Obama take over Ban Ki Moon’s post at the UN.
It would be the certain death for that collection of trough feeding fascists.
Time to end the UN anyway …. long past time.
We are actually at war with ISIS’s and al Qaeda’s version of Islam. Basically we are at war with Salafist Islam. And although we are not at war with all Islamists, all Islamists are ultimately our enemies. Just like white supremacists and Nazis were and are our enemies.
“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”
― Thomas Sowell
So, messing up health care in America was not enough for Prince Narcissus.
Now he wants to meddle in other countries too.
A radical muslim wants to cut off your head. A moderate muslim wants the radical muslim to cut off your head.
There is no moderate islam, there is only islam(I purposely do NOT capitalize this evil system of control).
Is there anyone left who still believes anything this man says? Even his own supporters must know by now that he isn’t creditable. Oh, yes, you can keep your health care plan if you like it, that’s his hallmark. He, Pelosi, Senator Reid of Nevada, Martha Robertson, Andrew Cuomo, and Barbara Lifton, all birds of a feather flocking together.