Barack Obama, President of the United States of America
addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations last week. He made a long and impassioned speech,
touching on key global issues but as expected justifying everything that the
USA has done and does and making a case for ‘more of the same whether you like
it or not’. The man is educated and
even called an intellectual. He can
talk. He can turn black into white and
convince blacks that he’s black and whites that he is white.
Such a man can get away with anything if
given the opportunity to talk. But what
if someone entered the wrong script into the teleprompter? What if Obama is everything he promised to be
and not what he turned out to be? What
would have been his original script in such a scenario? We can indulge in a bit
of harmless, drone-less conspiracy, right?
Mr President, Mr Secretary General, fellow delegates, ladies
and gentlemen:
Each year we come together to reaffirm the founding vision
of this institution. Those who built
the United Nations believed it could allow us to resolve conflicts, enforce
rules of behavior and build habits of cooperation. Today, looking back, we can say with
certainty that the awful carnage of two world wars did not shift our
thinking.
For most of recorded history, individual aspirations were
subject to the whims of tyrants and empires.
Divisions of race and religion and tribe were settled through the sword
and the clash of armies. This has not
changed in the last 69 years. The idea
that nations and peoples could come together in peace to solve their disputes
and advance a common prosperity remains unimaginable.
Speaking of tyrants and empires, when has my country ever
champion the aspirations of individual countries? When did we not act as tyrant and as
empire? We should not ask ourselves
whether we possess the wisdom and courage as nation-states and members of an
international community to meet new and profound challenges. We should ask
ourselves wisdom and courage are enough when some of us place greater faith in
power and arrogance.
What did you do to put an end to war, someone might inquire
regarding my tenure as President of the United States. I can tell you that five years ago, nearly
180,000 Americans were serving in harm’s way in Iraq but that now we’ve quit
that country. I can tell you that as we
ready to end operations in Afghanistan we’ve already dismantled the core of al
Qaeda. I can say we’re working
diligently to close the prison in Guantanamo Bay. I can tell you that we are targeting those
who pose an imminent threat to the United States and that there’s near
certainty of no civilian casualties when we use drones. Someone would say, ‘you’ve taken war to
another level’. This is true.
First of all, imminent threat to the United States is an
easy excuse because it is subjective and unverifiable. We invaded Iraq, after all, to eliminate
non-existent weapons of mass destruction.
We made the al Qaeda. We made the Islamic State. They were not accidents. They provided excuses to do what all
empire-builders do: ‘bombs in – booty out’.
The IS, in fact, is helping us do what we always wanted to do in Syria
without a by-your-leave from this institution.
So it would be wrong to say that aid cannot keep pace with
the suffering of the wounded and displaced.
We made sure that there’s enough carnage to make aid ineffective. Well,
that’s not exactly true.
Aid-ineffectiveness, to us, is ‘collateral’. It’s easy.
All we had to do was pick some people, call them moderates, arm them,
turn some of them into extremists and then pretend to go after them when in
fact all that matters is that they occupy some territory in a country also
occupied by people we want to eliminate.
We will say, for example, that Syria used chemical
weapons. We don’t have to prove it; when
you have power, saying is enough (like weapons of mass destruction –
non-existent). We don’t say, you will
notice, that Israel used chemical weapons.
We won’t say that the USA has
used chemical weapons or that we’ve killed more people in more countries than
any other country has done over the last 100 years.
My country is chastised for meddling in the region, accused
of having a hand in all manner of conspiracy, but it is also blamed for not
doing enough to solve the region’s problems. This might seem to be a
contradiction but the truth is that the complaints are from people we can call
dependents with horrendous track records.
Take a poll and the overwhelming majority would say ‘get the hell out!’
Rest assured, ladies and gentlemen, that the USA will use
all elements of power including military force to secure our core interests in
the Middle East. In other words, we really don’t give a s*** about the general
or majority concerns of this assembly. We’ve
turned the Middle East upside down politically and called it ‘Arab Spring’.
Gumption? Yes. That’s the privilege of
the arrogant who have the power to name and misname things, people and even
countries.
The danger for the world is that the United States may
disengage from all this and thereby create a vacuum of leadership that no other
nation is ready to fill. I am not
kidding you here. The ‘danger’ here is
not to the world but to the USA. But
think about it, if it is about a single nation calling the shots, why should we
gather here and talk as though it’s a one country one vote institution?
Today we tell the world that without unsanctioned action (we
added the label ‘international’ for reasons of courtesy) Libya would now be
engulfed in civil war and bloodshed, never mind the fact that Libya IS engulfed
in all that.
I know what side of history I want the United States to be
on. I know where we stand. You might think we are embarrassed but we are
not. Sorry.
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