Under the guise of fighting “terrorism,” a controversial proposal by the Obama administration to create a new international travel regime controlling who can go where, and when, was adopted unanimously by the United Nations Security Council on September 24. Among other elements, the new UN regime purports to force national governments and dictators to adopt laws prohibiting travel abroad by anyone “suspected” of links to “terror,” which the UN has no definition for. In addition to boosting the UN’s role in allegedly fighting nebulous notions of “terrorism” and “extremism,” the measure will also further empower the global outfit’s fledgling self-styled “law enforcement” agency known as Interpol. While Obama and the UN claim their new regime is “binding” on humanity, it will not be presented to the U.S. Senate for the constitutionally required advice and consent needed for treaties.
The irony of Obama pushing a new UN regime ostensibly aimed at combating “terrorism” by Islamists, even while his administration is now openly supporting jihadist groups in Syria, did not escape unnoticed. Indeed, the Obama administration and its “allies” in the supposed fight against the Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) have been crucial to the emergence of the terror networks currently wreaking havoc across Syria, Iraq, Libya, and other nations in the region.
ISIS fighters, for example, proudly tout their cooperation with Obama’s “moderate rebels,” saying they collaborate in battles and buy weapons from the Western-backed “Free Syrian Army.” Myriad Obama-backed “rebels,” meanwhile, have openly boasted of their ties to ISIS and al-Qaeda in the fight against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Some have even joined ISIS directly, taking their weapons with them. Middle Eastern officials cited in press reports said Obama trained ISIS operatives at a secret base in Jordan. In Libya, rebel leaders backed by Obama and NATO against strongman Moammar Gadhafi included many self-styled al-Qaeda chiefs, too.
In other words, under the latest UN resolution, Obama’s years of arming and training jihadists should make him a top target for the latest UN terror regime, along with numerous other “allied” governments in Europe and among Sunni Muslim dictatorships. Presumably, though, the resolution does not apply to Western and Arab governments’ open support for jihadists in Syria — much less the sort of terror and mass-murder practiced regularly against civilians by UN member regimes in good standing, such as those ruling North Korea, Cuba, China, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and numerous other nations.
Instead of the terrorism employed by many UN member regimes against those they rule over, the UN measure purports to be mostly about various jihadist groups — virtually all of which have been, at one point or another, funded and trained by governments on the UN Security Council. Al-Qaeda, the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, and the Islamic State are all among those specifically listed in the resolution, though the measure is not limited to those groups. Undefined “violent extremism” is also mentioned repeatedly in the UN document as something to be fought at the global, regional, and national levels.
However, the text of the resolution itself appears to state that Islamic terrorists are not the focus. “Emphasizing that terrorism cannot and should not be associated with any religion, nationality or civilization” reads the Security Council Resolution on Foreign Terrorist Fighters, also known as Resolution 2178. The Obama administration has also repeatedly pushed that mantra, making it perfectly clear whom the White House views as “potential terrorists” in government reports: Everyday Americans with mainstream political views.
Official documents from the Obama administration’s Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense, and the Department of Justice, for example, have all identified the views held by tens or even hundreds of millions of Americans as potential terrorism indicators. Among others whose opinions and beliefs have been cited in such reports: pro-lifers, opponents of illegal immigration, liberty-lovers, people suspicious of centralized authority, states’ rights proponents, anti-UN activists, Ron Paul supporters, libertarians, conservatives, animal rights activists, environmentalists, and more.
Returning U.S. veterans, too, are in the terror crosshairs, according to a widely ridiculed and criticized Homeland Security report purporting to deal with violent extremism and domestic terror. Last year, the DOD was even exposed training U.S. troops that Catholics, evangelical Christians, and Orthodox Jews were “religious extremists” on par with al-Qaeda, the Ku Klux Klan, and Hamas. Before that, the Justice Department was caught training local and state police to consider mainstream political bumper stickers as warning signs of a potential terror threat.
In the latest “binding” UN Security Council resolution, adopted unanimously on September 25 under Article VII of the UN Charter in a special meeting chaired by Obama, national governments said they would work together in combating the alleged threat. In accordance with years of demands from dictatorships that “terrorism” be placed under UN jurisdiction, all of the terror efforts in the Obama-sponsored measure are to be conducted under UN supervision in accordance with what the document refers to as global law. The resolution, for instance, claims that “international cooperation and any measures taken by Member States to prevent and combat terrorism must comply fully with the Charter of the United Nations.” It also says member governments “must ensure that any measures taken to counter terrorism comply with all their obligations under international law.”
After the vote, Obama explained why he thought the UN needed to adopt his scheme. “I called this meeting because we must come together as nations and as an international community to confront a real and growing threat of foreign terrorist fighters,” he said, again deceptively referring to “nations” when he really meant the governments and dictatorships ruling over nations. “The historic resolution we just adopted enshrines our commitment to meet this challenge.” Resolutions, though, “will not be enough,” Obama added. “The words spoken here today must be matched and translated into action, into deeds, concrete action.”
The irony, of course, is that the Obama administration has done more to support Islamic terrorism than perhaps any other entity or individual on the planet in recent years. From arming and providing air support to actual al-Qaeda leaders in Libya to training self-declared jihadist “rebels” in Syria — in both cases to topple relatively secular regimes that until recently were U.S. allies in the “terror war” — the lawless activities in support of jihad have even led some analysts to conclude that Obama “switched sides” in the “war.” Many of Obama’s closest allies — Sunni dictatorships, for example — have also been key to building up the terror threat wreaking havoc across Syria and Iraq.
Now, though, the public is expected to believe that Obama and his fellow UN members consider the threat they nurtured to be so serious that further empowering the UN is the only way to deal with it. Among other elements, the resolution demands that national governments implement programs to “counter” undefined “violent extremism,” a key pet project of the Obama administration that has been underway for years in the United States, especially in local schools.
Without offering much detail, the measure calls on governments “to engage relevant local communities and non-governmental actors in developing strategies to counter the violent extremist narrative that can incite terrorist acts, address the conditions conducive to the spread of violent extremism, which can be conducive to terrorism, including by empowering youth, families, women, religious, cultural and education leaders, and all other concerned groups of civil society and adopt tailored approaches to countering recruitment to this kind of violent extremism and promoting social inclusion and cohesion.”
Separately, the measure touts the role of Interpol and various other UN “anti-terror” outfits in allegedly combating terrorism. It also calls on the global body’s fledgling law-enforcement apparatus to “intensify its efforts with respect to the foreign terrorist fighter threat and to recommend or put in place additional resources to support and encourage national, regional and international measures to monitor and prevent the transit of foreign terrorist fighters.” A much easier way of fighting terror, of course, would be to stop shipping weapons to jihadists in pursuit of “regime change” and various other goals.
Efforts to stop the flow of private-sector (as opposed to government) financing of terrorism is also a key part of the UN resolution, though with no UN definition of terrorism and varying definitions among governments, the purpose of such language remains murky. The UN measure also purports to order national governments to curtail the online speech and communications of suspected violent extremists. Finally, the measure creates an international travel regime, which demands that UN members share information and stop “foreign terrorist fighters” from crossing their borders. (With the administration deliberately keeping the U.S.-Mexico virtually wide open, such provisions sound particularly absurd.)
Right now, all of those “terror” schemes are supposedly aimed primarily at al-Qaeda and ISIS — the barbarians nurtured from the start in Syria by the Obama administration and its allies amid the half-baked plot to oust Syrian despot Assad. In the future, however, its application could easily extend much further than the mass-murdering maniacs armed and trained courtesy of Western taxpayers and mega-wealthy Arab dictators. In Article 29, the UN’s own “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” claims no rights or freedoms may be used contrary to the purposes and principles of the UN.
President John F. McManus of the constitutionalist John Birch Society, which has opposed U.S. government membership in the UN for over five decades, blasted the latest scheme as well. “For decades, the United States has sought authorization for various acts from the United Nations (e.g., Korean War, Vietnam War via the UN’s SEATO pact, etc.),” he explained, asking why Obama thought he needed a UN agreement to fight terrorism. “Why go to the UN for such authorization? The answer, sad to relate, is that the U.S. has allowed itself to become an inferior to the superior UN. And one seeks authorization from a superior, not the other way around. A truly independent nation would act in its own best interests. And doing so would encourage other nations to act in a similar fashion.”
While the UN resolution may at first glance seem innocent enough, it represents yet another steppingstone in a decades-old plot eventually aiming to build what its architects proudly refer to as a “New World Order.” It has little if anything to do with actually fighting the “terror” those same architects specialize in manufacturing. If the American people hope to remain free and independent, getting the U.S. government to defund and withdraw from the UN is crucial. Legislation in Congress right now, H.R. 75, would do precisely that. With the global outfit widely described as the “dictators’ club” increasingly taking aim at the United States and its Constitution, the time to “Get U.S. Out” of the UN is now.
Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is normally based in Europe. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU.
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