Pres. Obama’s speech to the U.N. was full of hollow rhetoric and hypocrisy.
He said the nations of the world must “renew the purpose of the UN’s founding” and “observe and enforce international norms”—all this just two days after he violated those norms and undermined the purpose of the U.N.’s founding by waging war in Syria without the U.N. Security Council’s authorization.
Then he had the gall to say that Russia believes “might makes right,” while the United States believes in “right makes right.” But what is this new war in Syria but an exercise in might makes right?
And then he whisked under the rug more than a whole century of U.S. interventions in the Third World (Haiti, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, Brazil, Chile, Iran, Iraq, the Congo, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines, just to name a few) when he said the United States believes “that bigger nations should not be able to bully smaller ones, that people should be able to choose their own fate.” History, give me rewrite!
It didn’t seem to trouble him, either, somehow, that as he was hailing “the path of diplomacy and peace,” he was waging war. And he even said, “It is time for a new compact among the civilized peoples of the world to eradicate war,” as he sent more cruise missiles and bombs into Syria.
He only waved in a tiny passage about climate change, snubbing the hundreds of thousands of people who had gathered in New York just days before to raise the awareness of the world’s leaders about this crisis.
And he swerved way out of his way to hail “entrepreneurship” as an “antidote to violence.”
This was a speech that could have been delivered by George W. Bush.