Yesterday, President Obama made a
speech to the UN General Assembly that was historic because it represented what ex-UN Ambassador John Bolton aptly called a post-American speech by our first post-American president.
It expanded on the theme of Obama's famous Cairo speech,
the Lap Dance of the Seven Veils... America is to blame for the world's ills and he was there to apologize, abase himself and then sell out our ally Israel as sort of a Special Free Offer to prove how sincere he was about it all.
Obama made it crystal clear that he rejects any notion of American exceptionalism, and even American sovereignty over its own destiny, saying:
"In an era when our destiny is shared, power is no longer a zero-sum game. No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation. No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed. No balance of power among nations will hold. The traditional divisions between nations of the South and the North make no sense in an interconnected world; nor do alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War." After the expected kumbaya intro, Obama started just like he did in Cairo, apologizing for absolutely all the sins America has supposedly committed against the Muslim World - Guantanamo, our interrogations of al-Qaeda terrorists, Iraq, our efforts in Afghanistan and the like. He implicitly accused America of 'torture' and mentioned America's new membership in the racist UN Human Rights Council and his efforts to gut our nuclear weapons arsenal as applause getters. Given the audience, those parts went over very well.
In this context, he mentioned the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty and said that "those nations that refuse to live up to their obligations must face consequences..Because a world in which IAEA inspections are avoided and the United Nation's demands are ignored will leave all people less safe, and all nations less secure."
He then went on to mention North Korea and Iran and said he was
"committed to diplomacy that opens a path to greater prosperity and more secure peace for both nations if they live up to their obligations" but that if they ignore what he termed 'international standards',
"..the world must stand together to demonstrate that international law is not an empty promise, and that treaties will be enforced." The translation? Obama apparently is punting on Iran and North Korea and leaving matters in the hands of the UN, which of course will do nothing given the realities. He'll try to bribe these two rogue nuclear powers and hope for the best, but otherwise he'll simply continue his non-policy, vote "present" and just shrug his shoulders at the inevitable result.
Mentioning the NPT and the IAEA is also interesting in the context of the remarks he made about world wide nuclear disarmament. The sub-context obviously referred to two non NPT signatories regarded as adversaries by the Muslim world, Israel and India.While he didn't mention either country in this particular part of his speech, he clearly implied that non-signatories should be forced to abide by the NPT. And I doubt that implication was lost on his audience.Think of this speech as a lead in to US-supported UN resolutions calling for a nuclear free Middle East and demanding that Israel comply or face major sanctions.
Obama also officially endorsed forcing Israel to return to the indefensible pre-1967 borders and let the appreciative audience know that the US opposes Jews having the right to build houses on land they legally purchased and now own, including in East Jerusalem. He has adopted the Arab narrative of referring to the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria ( AKA the West Bank) and in East Jerusalem as 'settlements' and part of an ongoing 'occupation.'
Since the president is reportedly a graduate of Harvard Law School, I'd dearly love to see him try to prove that
any of this land is under occupation as the word has always been defined, but I digress.
And then there's this...
"The United States does Israel no favors when we fail to couple an unwavering commitment to its security with an insistence that Israel respect the legitimate claims and rights of the Palestinians. (Applause.) And -- and nations within this body do the Palestinians no favors when they choose vitriolic attacks against Israel over constructive willingness to recognize Israel's legitimacy and its right to exist in peace and security."Here, Obama has directly coupled US support for Israel's right to exist with Israel's acquiescence of what we are now supposed to refer to as 'legitimate claims and rights of the Palestinians' - creating a Jew-free reichlet in all of the West Bank including half of Jerusalem, the creation of half a million Jewish refugees, and the right of the Palestinians to flood the remainder of Israel with genocidal 'refugees' of their own. And it bears remembering that the Palestinians and the Arab League are adamant that none of this is legitimate. In exchange for Israel committing what amount to national suicide via major strategic concessions, all Obama asks from the Arabs is words.
Somehow, I doubt the Israelis have much confidence in Obama's 'unwavering commitment.'
In a uniquely shameful act, the president also explicitly equated the IDF with Hamas terrorists, comparing "the Israeli girl in Sderot who closes her eyes in fear that a rocket will take her life" with "the Palestinian boy in Gaza who has no clean water and no country to call his own."
He seems to have no conception that the violations of the human rights of both of the hypothetical people he mentions are a direct result of the policies of Hamas, the Palestinian leadership, and the refusal of the Arab nations to accept Jews living next to them in peace and equality. Nor did Obama's supposed concern over human rights extend to the almost one million Jewish refugees of the 1948 conflict, or to the Iranian people so brutally repressed by their own government in recent months.
The president of the United States, who prides himslef on his supposed concern for human rights and his commitment to help the oppressed kept silent on Iran. At the same time, outside the UN during Obama's speech, hundreds of protesters were demonstrating against the brutality of the Iranian regime.
The rest of the speech essentially dealt with pious homilies about climate change and the world economic crisis..both, of course, which are America's fault.
In one speech, we have the spectacle of the president of the United States throwing both a long time ally and American exceptionalism overboard in the hopes of appeasing people who have no intention of being appeased. It was a despicable exercise in hypocrisy, selective morality and abasement rare even in the UN, which has seen plenty of both in the past.
After looking at what he had to say, you literally have to wonder how President Obama thinks about his country.
Obama has savored the best America has to offer. He was able to live a privileged life and go to the finest schools and by his own account never experienced overt racism. In fact, doors were opened for him in a way few people of any background experience in America.
So his disdain for American exceptionalism can't come from any deprivation he himself has ever experienced. Instead, it appears to come from a visceral dislike of the country's basic nature and institutions, a deep commitment to the idea that America needs to be taken down a peg, to submerge itself in 'the international community.'
His attitude towards Israel is
to be expected, considering the sort of people Barack Obama has taken for mentors and political allies over the years.
But it is his attitude towards his own country that provides the most food for thought.
The change Americans voted for only a few months ago is coming back to haunt them...with a vengeance. One can almost hear Obama's old America-hating mentor Jeremiah Wright chuckling about chickens coming home to roost.
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