Who was President Obama trying to appeal to in his speech? You’ll never find “a more wretched hive of scum and villainy” than some of those nations who make up the UN General Assembly.
Niles Gardiner writing for the Telegraph (contrast this to the opening paragraph of this editorial in the Guardian), nails it, describing Obama’s UN speech today as a display of soft power in the face of brutal enemies, thereby failing to advance American interests onto the world stage.
It’s always a bad sign when a US president gets several rounds of heavy applause at the UN General Assembly, as Barack Obama did this morning in New York. Needless to say, the loudest cheers from the gathering of world leaders came when he condemned the actions of a close US ally, Israel, in continuing to build settlements in the West Bank. You can always rely on attacks on the Israelis to generate the biggest roars of approval at any meeting of the United Nations, and Obama dutifully obliged.
The Assembly also mightily cheered Obama’s boast that the United States no longer condones “torture” (as if it ever did), a blatantly political swipe at the interrogation techniques of the previous government, which most Americans happen to back. The president’s decision to rejoin the UN Human Rights Council, a basket case of an organization that includes some of the world’s worst tyrannies, was also greeted warmly.Needless to say, when the president briefly brought up the need for greater international cooperation over Afghanistan, or spoke about the threat posed by al-Qaeda – or “violent extremists” as he calls them – there was stony silence.
Overall this was a staggeringly naïve speech by President Obama, with Woodstock-style utterances like “I will not waver in my pursuit of peace” or “the interests of peoples and nations are shared.” All that was missing was a conga of hippies dancing through the aisles with a rousing rendition of “Kumbaya”.
Will president Obama be known, not so much for the disaster of his domestic policies, but for the disaster that is his foreign policy?
A former fetus, the “wordsmith from nantucket” was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1968. Adopted at birth, wordsmith grew up a military brat. He achieved his B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles (graduating in the top 97% of his class), where he also competed rings for the UCLA mens gymnastics team. The events of 9/11 woke him from his political slumber and malaise. Currently a personal trainer and gymnastics coach.
The wordsmith has never been to Nantucket.
I don’t think that’s tobacco he’s sneaking out to smoke in the Rose Garden.
This man is high. He has to be.
And, if it’s not pot he’s high on (with which I have no problem — just don’t try to run the country on it), then he’s simply high on being HIM.
Which is a really, really big deal… I guess.
If you’re high.
Good links Word, thanks. Wonder how it went with his advisors after the speech, were they pleased? do they think they hit the right chords to advance their decrepid foreign policy? did they use it to pump up Obama’s already over inflated ego? Are they apologizing to Israel behind the scenes?
I can’t remember who the Israeli official was that was interviewed after the speech, when asked if he thought this administration was a strong ally, he said yes, but judging from his body language and hesitation, I thought he was uncomfortable with the question and his answer.
Brent Bozell was on FOX this morning pointing out in Reagan’s speeches he always used “we” —- Obama uses “I.” I looked up his Media Research site and found the statistics he was talking about:
>snip<
The Sunday Obamapalooza:
>snip<
All Obama, all the time:
http://businessandmedia.org/commentary/2009/20090923103258.aspx
PEBO doesnt understand that people grow tired of hearing the same droning about the same subjects over and over. Even a commercial that people like on TV becomes annoying after you have heard it every day for a month. Next year the consensus will most likely be he needs to shut up and actually do something positive.
What Barokeydoke was trying to say in that UN speech….what he was asking us,and in a larger sense,the entire world to believe…..is that after decades of being essentially axiomatic in a global society,there will no longer be any such thing as ‘American exceptionalism’….that the US is no longer to be considered THE world leader….the model of civility and liberty and tranquility…it is to be thought of as just one more country among many….yet at the same time,in the same speech, he asks us to subcribe to a notion of his own PERSONAL ‘exceptionalism’ as some sort of transcendental transformative force who will personally make amends for and compentste for what he asserts is decades of American misconduct and villainy in world affairs…”Don’t worry,folks…the US has been the bully on the block for a long time…but now I’m here and I’m gonna set things right with this punk ass country”
Guess who is going to be in the Larry King show? Chavez, Castro and Mahmoud!
Larry: as a Jew, have you no shame? How can CNN allow these loons to talk when they denied that the Holocaust ever took place! Why were millions of Jew exterminated?
I teach my kids never to forget and CNN has the audacity to broadcast these bunch of haters?