Obama's UN Speech Panned ... "Naive" and worse

NRO: "Obama’s Most Naïve Speech Ever?’
Nile Gardiner on the president’s address to the United Nations.


Just One of the Obtuse Lines from Obama's Speech to the U.N. [Peter Kirsanow]

"And I pledge that America will always stand with those who stand up for their dignity and their rights — for the student who seeks to learn; the voter who demands to be heard; the innocent who longs to be free; the oppressed who yearns to be equal." Except, of course, if they happen to be Iranian dissidents.

Galactic obliviousness


Bolton: ‘A Post-American Speech By Our First Post-American President’ [Robert Costa]

Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton tells NRO that President Obama’s address to the U.N. was “a post-American speech by our first post-American president. It was a speech high on the personality of Barack Obama and high on multilateralism, but very short in advocating American interests.”

“It was a very naïve, Wilsonian speech, and very revealing of Obama’s foreign policy,” says Bolton. “Overall, it was so apologetic for the actions of prior administrations, in an effort to distance Obama from them, that it became yet another symbol of American weakness in the wake of the president’s decision to abandon missile sites in Poland and the Czech Republic, and his recent manifest hesitation over what to do in Afghanistan.”

“The most significant point of the speech was how the president put Israel on the chopping block in a variety of references, from calling Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegitimate to talking about ending ‘the occupation that began in 1967.’ That implies that he supports going back to 1967 borders,” says Bolton. “Obama has a very tough road ahead. He is frequently taking the side of the Palestinians, who don’t have a competent leader who can make hard decisions and compromises in the future.”

Also noteworthy, Bolton says, was how Obama highlighted “just how much of American foreign policy that he wants to run through the U.N.”

“Usually presidential speeches at the U.N. are ‘state of the world’ addresses. Obama’s speech was filled with talk about U.N. bodies, U.N. treaties, and sending Secretary of State Clinton to a conference on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which would be an incredible waste of time for her. The president’s speech showed a fascination with U.N.-centric issues. Obama talked about getting past ‘balance of power’ politics. He talked about the interests that unite us rather than divide us.”

Bolton’s conclusion: “It was all extremely naïve. The president did everything he could to say: ‘Can’t we all just get along?’”


Staggering Naïveté [Brett D. Schaefer]
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MGFlOTlkMjdlZmI5MDUyYjk1ZTIwNjZjMzJkYjFlNDE=

Pres. Barack Obama’s first address to the United Nations was, as expected, warmly received. The contrast between this reaction and the hostility that generally greeted Pres. George W. Bush was stark. At its core, the difference is based on how each president challenged the U.N.

President Bush famously asked, “Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?” He challenged the U.N. to address the misconduct of its member states and to actually follow through on its founding principles — promoting human rights and fundamental freedoms, confronting threats to international peace and security with action, and promoting economic prosperity and social progress. Bush also pointed out where the U.N. has fallen short, and challenged member states to fix the body.

These are tough issues for the U.N. because they go to the heart of differences between the U.S. and most U.N. member states, and they would require those member states to confront the aberrant actors among their colleagues.

In contrast to President Bush, President Obama clearly sees the U.S. as the source of U.S.–U.N. friction. He may have intended his speech to come across as earnest and humble, but it instead came across as if he were trying to justify America’s worthiness to be a member of the U.N. Giving the impression that the U.S. should aspire to be worthy of acceptance by the likes of Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Russia, China, Cuba, and other repressive regimes is appalling.

Obama’s willingness to accommodate anti-American views at the U.N. was offensive. It was particularly rich to hear him say:

This body has often become a forum for sowing discord instead of forging common ground; a venue for playing politics and exploiting grievances rather than solving problems. After all, it is easy to walk up to this podium and to point fingers and stoke division. Nothing is easier than blaming others for our troubles, and absolving ourselves of responsibility for our choices and our actions. Anyone can do that.

This, just minutes after pointing his finger squarely at the previous administration:

I took office at a time when many around the world had come to view America with skepticism and distrust. Part of this was due to misperceptions and misinformation about my country. Part of this was due to opposition to specific policies, and a belief that on certain critical issues, America has acted unilaterally, without regard for the interests of others. This has fed an almost reflexive anti-Americanism, which too often has served as an excuse for our collective inaction.

He noted that his administration has spent the months since his inauguration weakening or reversing U.S. policies that have traditionally caused heartburn at the U.N. He went on to list the steps he has taken to correct the actions that might lead people to “question the character and cause” of America: prohibiting torture, closing Guantanamo, ending the war in Iraq, putting American support behind “a world without nuclear weapons,” supporting the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, addressing global warming, working cooperatively with other nations, joining the Human Rights Council, signing the Disabilities Convention, supporting the Millennium Development Goals, ending America’s “selective” support of democracy, and paying America’s arrears to the U.N.

Such changes are no great sacrifice to him. After all, American liberals generally opposed the Bush administration on these policies. But Susan Rice, Obama’s ambassador to the U.N., expressed the thought behind this strategy: “Others will likely shoulder a greater share of the global burden if the U.S. leads by example, acknowledges mistakes, corrects course when necessary, forges strategies in partnership and treats others with respect.” The Obama administration clearly believes that throwing the Bush administration under the bus will yield a harvest of pro-Americanism that will result in support for its policies.

But what did Obama ask of other nations?

*Support for initiatives that his administration wants to pursue anyway — such as global warming and disarmament — in a forum virtually guaranteed to put the U.S. on the defensive.

*Support for human rights, but with the full knowledge that U.N. member states that violate human rights face little repercussion in the U.N. for their actions.

*Opposition to terrorism, but without a demand that the U.N. define what terrorism is (the lack of such a definition makes it very difficult for the world body to address terrorism effectively).

*Support for development, even though Obama realizes this will simply result in the U.N.’s hectoring developed countries to provide more assistance.The other U.N. member states must be beside themselves with glee. President Obama gave them virtually everything they could ask for without demanding anything in return that was not already on the agenda (and which they are prepared to twist to their advantage). He did not even ask them to support more accountability, transparency, or efficiency in the U.N.

The Obama administration probably thinks that its actions and this speech have purchased it the goodwill that will translate into support for U.S. policies. The administration is setting itself up for disappointment.

The political nature of the U.N. is combative and tough. Most member states consider these concessions their due. They will pocket them and stand firm to defend their interests. Cooperation will be on their terms, on issues they wish to pursue. The naïveté of the speech was staggering

.— Brett D. Schaefer is the Jay Kingham Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at the Heritage Foundation and editor of ConUNdrum: The Limits of the United Nations and the Search for Alternatives.


Israel on the Chopping Block [Andy McCarthy]

John Bolton is obviously right in his observations about our post-American president's shameful U.N. speech today. I wish only to note again that, on the reference to Israel's "occupation that began in 1967," Obama's path to this execrable description was cleared by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Typical of her nauseating rheteoric on the subject is this, reported by Haaretz in 2007:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday that Palestinians deserve to live under better conditions than they are subjected to and be "free of the humiliation of occupation" in a state of their own. "I promise you my personal commitment to that goal," Rice said at a dinner marking the third anniversary of the American Task Force on Palestine. "There could be no greater legacy for America," Rice told the group, which describes itself as nonpartisan and supportive of a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel. "The Palestinian people deserve a better life ... free of the humiliation of occupation," she said


Bayefsky's U.N. Update [Robert Costa]

Frequent NRO contributor Anne Bayefsky, a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute and executive director of Human Rights Voices, just gave us a call from the United Nations to relay her take on President Obama’s speech. “The president played to his audience, which was largely an undemocratic one,” says Bayefsky. “In that way, he succeeded.”

Bayefsky notes that the president received a big round of applause for suggesting that Israel should return to 1967 borders, “without the slightest concern that Israel cannot return to indefensible borders — at least if there is to be any hope of real peace.” Obama, she says, also made “a unilateral policy statement about what is supposed to be subject to bilateral negotiations, as if Israel were his vassal state. That made a terrific impression with the folks at the U.N., but it has nothing to do with a global agenda that advances international peace and security.

“President Obama also engaged in another round of moral equivalency,” says Bayefsky, “which he made infamous in his Cairo speech. He compared those who live in terror in Israel with those who are still waiting for clean water and a state of their own: a statement which ignores history and the facts on the ground. The Palestinian people in Gaza, who elected a government sworn to Israel’s destruction, are not a country of their own because their elected representatives in Gaza have declared their permanent opposition to living side by side with any Jewish state. The President’s continuing failure to recognize the difference between the victims of terror and the perpetrators bodes ill for any prospect for peace in the Middle East.”

Bayefsky adds that one interesting feature of Obama’s speech was the number of times that he apologized for America. “He essentially said to the world that ‘I’m embarrassed at America's record’ and that their understanding of America prior to his ascendance to the country's highest office was correct.”

“He also got a big round of applause when he pledged to stop torturing people,” says Bayefsky. “The president set up a straw man — a false statement disputing this country's constant denunciation of torture — to make himself look attractive to the outside world. Such words should diminish his credibility as commander-in-chief, as a man supposed to be defending our values abroad unapologetically.

“President Obama had the audacity to speak at length about [how] he will always stand with the oppressed, while, at the U.N., hundreds of protesters from Iran were outside calling him out [about] what is clearly false,” says Bayefsky. “While the protesters’ counterparts disappear in Iranian jails, President Obama has offered an outstretched hand to the man who is responsible for the fate of Iranian dissidents. President Obama is not standing with the oppressed of Iran. Thankfully, every Iranian forced to stay outside the U.N. today said loud and clear that they believe President Obama’s policy on Iran is an outrageous abandonment of democratic values.”
President Obama, Bayefsky says, also said that he will no longer tolerate those on the wrong side of history. “It is becoming very plain that this president is on the wrong side of history. He stood before a crowd of largely undemocratic leaders and said he was on their side. Instead of leading, the president sounded confused and relativistic, saying that there is no one form of democracy and that everybody has their own take on what democracy means. Everyone inside the U.N. knows that those words are exactly how the Cubans and Chinese speak within these walls. The president’s lack of clarity and his deliberate ambiguity on the nature of democracy and American values were well received at the U.N., but it did nothing to enhance America’s moral stature or significance in the world today.”

On a final note, Bayefsky says that on Iran, the president said that “if” the country chooses to ignore nuclear standards, then it would have a problem. “If? We already know exactly what Iran has been doing,” she says. “Using the word ‘if’ suggests that President Obama is simply refusing to come to terms with the reality of Iran’s nuclear program and that he has an extraordinary blind spot that isn’t going away any time soon.

This speech ought to send shockwaves through not only the United States but among our European allies,” concludes Bayefsky. “They are now fully apprised that they have the weakest president in modern times ensconced in Washington, a man who will run away from saying what has to be said, if it doesn’t appeal to an audience with so many demagogues.”


Michelle Malkin:

"The We Suck '09 Tour"
"The Great Appeaser"
"He doesn't like America very much"