Bush-era State Department bureaucrat Stewart Patrick proclaimed President Obama’s Orwellian address to the United Nations General Assembly “one of the most impressive speeches of his presidency” on the Council on Foreign Relations website.
“Unlike many of Obama’s speeches, which have a professorial tendency to pull their punches, today’s address showed steely determination and a refreshing willingness to offend in delivering uncomfortable truths,” Patrick wrote in a post titled “President Obama’s UN Speech: Defending World Order.” Patrick claimed, “For a president who prides himself on ‘hitting singles,’ it looks like he got a runner home today.”
But anyone who actually read the text of Obama’s September 24 United Nations address would be left wondering what Patrick was talking about, as the speech seemed to be channeling the spirit of George Orwell’s “Big Brother” character in the dystopian novel 1984: it contained multiple flat-out contradictions that brought to memory Big Brother’s dictum “War is Peace.”
Toward the beginning of his speech, Obama proclaimed, “The very existence of this institution [the United Nations] is a unique achievement — the people of the world committing to resolve their differences peacefully, and to solve their problems together.” But just a few sentences later, he insisted: “First, all of us — big nations and small — must meet our responsibility to observe and enforce international norms.” And by “enforce international norms,” Obama meant, “First, the terrorist group known as ISIL must be degraded and ultimately destroyed.”
So much for peace from the Nobel Peace Prize winner who has unleashed bombing campaigns against seven different countries, by the count of investigative reporter Glenn Greenwald. When Obama said, “We will demonstrate that the future belongs to those who build — not those who destroy,” he meant that ISIL must be destroyed: “We will use our military might in a campaign of airstrikes to roll back ISIL. We will train and equip forces fighting against these terrorists on the ground,” Obama told the UN delegates. “There can be no reasoning — no negotiation — with this brand of evil. The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force. So the United States of America will work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death.”
You can’t negotiate or reason with these people, Obama argued to UN delegates. Bombing is necessary — unless you expose their ideology in the “light of day”:
The ideology of ISIL or al-Qaeda or Boko Haram will wilt and die if it is consistently exposed and confronted and refuted in the light of day. Look at the new Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies — Sheikh bin Bayyah described its purpose: “We must declare war on war, so the outcome will be peace upon peace.”
But if ISIL and its ilk will wilt by mere open conversation, why is a U.S.-organized global bombing campaign necessary? Apparently, as Orwell’s Big Brother might have remarked, “Ignorance is Strength.”
Obama has resolutely demanded that we should engage in bombing campaigns into the Syrian and Iraq messes: “So let’s be clear: This is a fight that no one is winning. A brutal civil war in Syria has already killed nearly 200,000 people — displaced millions. Iraq has come perilously close to plunging back into the abyss.” It doesn’t matter that this is a war no one is winning, Obama is essentially arguing; it’s a moral imperative to escalate this war.
Obama also inveighed against proxy wars:
And it points to the fact that it’s time for a broader negotiation in the region in which major powers address their differences directly, honestly, and peacefully across the table from one another, rather than through gun-wielding proxies. I can promise you America will remain engaged in the region, and we are prepared to engage in that effort.
But just a few sentences later he called for creating a grand coalition of proxies to do some of the bombing for his administration: “So the United States of America will work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death…. And already, over 40 nations have offered to join this coalition.” Obama even used the language of those who employ gun-wielding proxies with this remark about the “counterweight” Syrian insurgency: “Together with our partners, America is training and equipping the Syrian opposition to be a counterweight to the terrorists of ISIL and the brutality of the Assad regime.”
Counterweight? One must wonder if Obama has been up late at night reading too many 18th-century memoranda from the British Foreign Office on “balance of power.”
President Obama declared at the UN: “Next year, we should all be prepared to announce the concrete steps that we have taken to counter extremist ideologies in our own countries — by getting intolerance out of schools, stopping radicalization before it spreads, and promoting institutions and programs that build new bridges of understanding.”
But why wait until next year to begin such a laudable task? Maybe Americans can start on that mission immediately by refuting both Obama’s aggressive war-mongering under the mask of peace and tolerance, and his Council on Foreign Relations cheerleaders.
Photo of President Obama at United Nations General Assembly: AP Images
