More Fallout from Obama's UN speech

Many comments along the lines of naive, embarrasing, and "he likes tyrants and dislikes America".

Contrast Obama's speech w/ Bibi's today. Not even close.


Krauthammer:

On President Obama’s speech toyesterday the U.N. General Assembly :

This speech hovered somewhere between embarrassing and dangerous. You had a president of the United States actually saying: “No [one] nation can or should try to dominate another.”

I will buy the "should try to" as kind of adolescent wishful thinking. But “no [one] nation can dominate another”? What planet is he living on? It is the story of man. What does he think Russia is doing to Georgia?

But the alarming part is what he said in the same paragraph where he said that it makes no sense anymore "the alignments of nations that are rooted in the cleavages of the Cold War."

Well, NATO is rooted in the cleavage of the Cold War. The European Union is rooted in the cleavage of the Cold War. Our alliances with Japan and Korea and the Philippines, our guarantees to Taiwan and Eastern Europe are all rooted in the cleavage of the Cold War. (Interesting noun, incidentally.)

So he is saying that is all now irrelevant. What does he think our allies are going to think who hear this?

Obama's speech is alarming because it says the United States has no more moral right to act or to influence world history than Bangladesh or Sierra Leone.

It diminishes the United States deliberately and wants to say that we should be one nation among others, and not defend the alliance of democracies that we have in NATO, for example, or to say — as [did] every president who goes before Obama — that we stand for something good and unique in the world.

And it [NATO] is not the equivalent, for example, of the alignment of Chavez with Ecuador and Bolivia and Nicaragua and Russia and Cuba and Iran…..

This one was worse: When he [Obama] boasted about how he had reversed the course of America, and those who doubt our character should look at our actions, among the actions he cited was our joining the U.N. Human Rights Council, which is led by the worst human rights violators on the planet. It is an Orwellian, farcical organization. The idea that we should be on it is regrettable, but the idea that we should be boasting about it as an American achievement is a scandal.


Is Obama Naïve? [Michael Ledeen]

I don't think so. I think that he rather likes tyrants and dislikes America. I think he'd like to be more powerful, I think he is trying to get control over as much of our lives as he can, so that he can put an end to the annoying tumult of our public life. As when he said (about health care) to the Congress, "Okay, you've talked enough, now it's time to do the right thing (my thing)." And he's trying to end American power in the outside world. He's saying "I'm going to stop us, before we kill again."

There is nothing unusual about elitist hatred of freedom. Back in the 18th century, when book publishing really got going, British authors were infuriated that they had to submit to the judgment of a marketplace. They didn't want to be judged by people who were obviously inferior to them, and there was a great rage among the intelligentsia, including some very famous men. And in modern times, we can all name famous intellectuals who fawned all over Mussolini, Stalin, Fidel, and even Hitler.

American politics are very fractious, and always have been. Leaders are constantly frustrated, and some of them come to yearn for an end to our freedom. They think they know best, they just want to tell us what to do and have us shut up and do it. I think Obama is one of them. He's not naïve. It's different. He doesn't like the way things work here, he thinks he can do much better, and he's possessed of the belief that America has done a lot of terrible things in the world, and should be prevented from doing such things ever again. The two convictions mesh perfectly. It's The Best and the Brightest run amok.

Democratic leaders' envy of tyrants' power can be understood. But it can't be forgiven.


Obama Likes Tyrants and Dislikes America . . . and Here's More Proof [Andy McCarthy]

Michael hits the nail on the head . . . and then comes this: The Obama administration has notified Congress of the State Department's intention to contribute $400,000 to foundations run by Muammar Qaddafi's two children — $200,000 each for daughter Aisha and son Saif. Saif, you may recall, is the son who escorted the Lockerbie terrorist Abdel Baset al-Megrahi home to a hero's welcome in Libya after President Obama sternly "warned" Qaddafi that there was to be no hero's welcome.

Illinois Republican congressman Mark Steven Kirk (House Appropriations Subcommittee on State/Foreign Operations) has sent Obama a letter asking him to rescind the funding.
Could somebody please tell this president that this is not just Annenberg Foundation cash he's passing out to his personal terrorist pals like Bill Ayers but American taxpayer dollars he's doling out to the terrorist tyrant behind the murder — in just that one incident — of 270 people, including 189 Americans.

Just 40 months to go. God help us.


Bitter Harvests to Come [Victor Davis Hanson]

If one were to sum up the Obama speech, it is the same old, same old formula: "I am a uniquely post-American fresh start; the era of Bush and our dreadful past is over; and because this is our moment, you, the world, owe me attention and support for my redefining America more to your tastes."

The problem with all this is endless: (1) most existing problems predated Bush and transcended him, as Obama is discovering with Iran, radical Islam in America, North Korea, Russia, etc.;
(2) By separating himself from the past, Obama sends the implicit message to allies (like Israel, India, Columbia, the Maliki government, eastern Europe, Sarkozy, Merkel, etc) that there must have been something wrong with them to have allied themselves with the U.S. during the Bush years — and to enemies and belligerents that their anti-Americanism is perhaps understandable given a shared antipathy for the Bush regime;

(3) By staking out the messianic, prophetic ground, and his strident anti-Bush credentials, observers are going to note his serial hypocrisies, such as keeping the Patriot Act, rendition, tribunals, Predator attacks, the Petraeus plan in Iraq, wiretaps, intercepts, etc., and in fact anything that smacks of a transnationalist protecting U.S. interests first, and global ones, second.
(4) By throat-clearing every speech with "Bush did it" and his own historic ascension to the presidency, Obama has given hope to unsavory characters — as the likes of everyone from a supportive Chávez to Castro have enthusiastically noted — that the United States has now "flipped," moving away from a Britain or Israel and more closely aligning itself with revolutionary figures on the West Bank or the exiled Zelaya, and thereby giving the impression that the prior regional order was flawed, and necessary change either will not, or cannot, be stopped by the U.S. — and indeed may be silently encouraged by America. In hopes of sowing short-term good will to Obama himself, the president is sowing long-term problems ahead for his country, the United States. There are lots of areas — Iran and its environs, the free former Soviet Republics, Taiwan, the 38th Parallel, Venezuela/Colombia, the borders of Israel, Cyprus, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, etc. — where tensions are scarcely restrained, and major aggressive players could easily try to change the existing order, if any thought the United States either did not care to intervene, could not intevene, or supported their efforts.

The key question is at what point will the American people sense that the Obama feel-good magic comes at the expense of long-term American interests — and that making some unsavory characters like our president now, will mean only trouble ahead for the country itself and its friends abroad.


What Was Worst About Obama's Speech Yesterday? [Rich Lowry]

Hard to say, but when Obama said this “For those who question the character and cause of my nation”. . . I sort of expected him to follow up with something like, look at the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg address, this nation's contribution to winning WWI, WWII, the Cold War, etc. Instead, he said this: "I ask you to look at the concrete actions we have taken in just nine months." He really imagines himself — to borrow the title of Allen Guelzo's fine Lincoln biography — the redeemer president. Here's my NY Post column on it today.


Re: The Redeemer President [Jonah Goldberg]

Rich — I agree. What strikes me about that line is how thoroughly Wilsonian it is. Wilson's love for and promotion of democracy has always been exaggerated. His view was far more Hegelian. He believed that every people should have a State that authentically represented the Nation (a point made by Qadaffi yesterday!). Democracy was one means of achieving this. But self-determination wasn't necessarily about democracy. It was about legitimacy and great Leaders. Anyway, it didn't seem to occur to Obama that the character and cause of the nation are not synonymous with the actions of his administration.


A Runner-Up [Jonah Goldberg]

I think the second-worst passage might have been this:

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.

There's a lot of silliness and untruth in there. No nation "can" dominate another? (He said the same thing in Cairo, I believe). Really? Better throw out nearly every history book ever written. No balance of power will hold? That doesn't sound like good news to me.

And worst of all: Alignments of nations rooted in the Cold War make no sense now? Really? I guess it's time to disband NATO and our commitments to South Korea, Japan, et al. I mean, do these speeches get vetted for what they actually mean? Or is just all about how they sound?