Obama (Finally) Gets it Right at the UN
After weeks of befuddled responses from the State Department and the White House to the riots across the Muslim world, President Obama and his speechwriters seem to have shed their tin ear in time for UN General Assembly. But with just over a month before the election, such a speech should be taken with a grain of salt.
Indeed, an Obama campaign adviser told the New York Times that “in this election year, campaigning trumped meetings with world leaders. ‘Look, if he met with one leader, he would have to meet with 10,’ the aide said.” But Obama, as the quasi-host of the United Nations (the crumbling building on the East River is technically international territory), took the time to make a high-profile defense of American foreign policy and values on a global stage.
And defend he did. Rather than seeming “apologetic,” the term Mitt Romney has used to hammer the President’s foreign policy, Obama spent the vast majority of his speech extolling American constitutional principles in the face of the anti-American (and anti-free speech) protests that have captured headlines since their spark on September 11th. Always comfortable with a teleprompter, Obama hit all the right notes with this section:
There is no speech that justifies mindless violence. There are no words that excuse the killing of innocents. There’s no video that justifies an attack on an embassy. There’s no slander that provides an excuse for people to burn a restaurant in Lebanon, or destroy a school in Tunis, or cause death and destruction in Pakistan.
Since Navy SEALs took out Osama bin Laden, President Obama has fallen back on foreign policy as his strong suit. Now, at risk of looking like Jimmy Carter with the tragic storming of an American embassy by an angry mob, Obama has gone into crisis mode. Unfortunately for him, very few Americans could care less about what happens at the UN.