A U.N. swan song
In his final speech to the U.N. General Assembly yesterday, President Obama provided any number of reminders — however unintentional — about the consequences of relinquishing U.S. leadership on the world stage and how many have suffered as a result.
He spent some time patting himself on the back for having during his eight years in office “taken away terrorist havens,” “resolved the Iranian nuclear issue,” and “opened relations with Cuba.” All but the latter dubious claims at best with even more dubious results.
And yet he also acknowledged that a quarter century after the end of the Cold War, “our societies are filled with uncertainty and unease and strife. Despite enormous progress, as people lose trust in institutions, governing becomes more difficult and tensions between nations become more quick to surface.”
The philosopher-in-chief lamented the “cycles of conflict and suffering” that plague the world we live in, adding, “Perhaps that’s our fate.”
Imagine for a moment Ronald Reagan giving a speech like this — you know, not “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” but, “Mr. Gorbachev, perhaps that wall is part of our fate — or maybe not.”
Yes, that’s how far we have come from a time when U.S. leadership meant something in the world to this day when Vladimir Putin annexes Crimea and marshals troops along eastern Ukraine and we do nothing. When children still die in the streets of Syria and judges and journalists are shipped off to Turkish prisons and our president stands before a world body and instead focuses on efforts to “curb the excesses of capitalism” and help “poorer countries leapfrog destructive forms of energy.”
Even as Obama was speaking, the cease-fire in Syria — a document never released to the American public — looked to be all but dead in the minds of everybody but Secretary of State John Kerry.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault yesterday told the painful truth:
“What have we seen these last few hours? Bombing is continuing. Aleppo is still threatened. The population is starving. And there is a humanitarian convoy that is attacked and there are dead. This is the reality. One must denounce this reality.”
And reality doesn’t make for pretty speeches.