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*TIA Daily* • *September 28, 2009 * *FEATURE ARTICLE* *Two Speeches, Two Souls* Surrender Your Mind, and the Rest Will Follow *by Robert Tracinski* *Editor's Note*: The Bubonic Plague has mostly passed, so I am back to work—but since I just couldn't manage to put together TIA Daily on Friday, Monday, and Tuesday, I have a big backlog of news to catch up on. Thus, you will notice that this edition is dated September 28—Monday's date. I'll have a new edition out tonight with yesterday's date, as I get back on top of some interesting developments that have happened while I was sick.—RWT It has been a revealing week. President Obama's speech to the UN—and its whole context—has revealed to us a lot about the outlook and priorities of our commander-in-chief. In particular, the contrast between Obama's speech and that of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed us a profound difference, not just in the two men's views of the United Nations, but in their souls. The central message of President Obama's speech<http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/09/23/obama_united_nations_general_assembly_transcript_98429.html>was his attempt to secure the UN's approval of America by apologizing for every single grievance the UN has against us. Noting that "I took office at a time when many around the world had come to view America with skepticism and distrust," he replied, "for those who question the character and cause of my nation, I ask you to look at the concrete actions that we have taken in just nine months." Here is his list: On my first day in office, I prohibited—without exception or equivocation—the use of torture by the United States of America. I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed…. In Iraq, we are responsibly ending a war. We have removed American combat brigades from Iraqi cities, and set a deadline of next August to remove all of our combat brigades from Iraqi territory…. I have outlined a comprehensive agenda to seek the goal of a world without nuclear weapons…. And this week, my Secretary of State will become the first senior American representative to the annual Members Conference of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Upon taking office, I appointed a Special Envoy for Middle East Peace…. To confront climate change, we have…moved from a bystander to a leader in international climate negotiations. To overcome an economic crisis…. We mobilized resources that helped prevent the crisis from spreading further to developing countries. And we joined with others to launch a $20 billion global food security initiative that will lend a hand to those who need it most…. We have also re-engaged the United Nations. We have paid our bills. We have joined the Human Rights Council…. And we address our priorities here, in this institution—for instance, through the Security Council meeting that I will chair tomorrow on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. Guantanamo Bay, the war in Iraq, the nuclear test ban treaty, the mid-East "peace process," global warming, foreign aid, unpaid UN dues—this is a laundry list of the global left's complaints about American independence and self-assertiveness. The most revealing, though, are the last two items on Obama's list. Why would we need to rejoin the Human Rights Council? For years, the UN has insisted on putting its Human Rights Council under the control of the violators of human rights—thug regimes like Syria and Libya. We withdrew in protest from this "tyrant's club" where one-party states were empowered to be the judges of political freedom. Now Obama has put us back on. Even more significant is the last line from Obama's list of apologies: his promise that we will "address our priorities here, in this institution." What does that mean? It means that whenever US interests are at risk, we will go through the United Nations first. It makes the UN into the gatekeeper of US foreign policy. Has there ever been an American president who was so dedicated to diminishing his nation's power in the world? I mean, other than Jimmy Carter. Now cut to Netanyahu's speech<http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/09/israeli-prime-minister-benjamin-netanyahus-un-speechbut-to-those-who-gave-this-holocaustdenier-a-hea.html>for an example of a diametrically opposite world view. Most reporting on the speech focused on Netanyahu's condemnation of the nations who sat through Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's earlier speech to the UN denying the existence of the Nazi Holocaust. But here is Netanyahu's central argument: [T]he greatest threat facing the world today is the marriage between religious fanaticism and the weapons of mass destruction, and the most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Are the member states of the United Nations up to that challenge?... The people of Iran are courageously standing up to this regime. People of goodwill around the world stand with them, as do the thousands who have been protesting outside this hall. Will the United Nations stand by their side? The jury is still out on the United Nations, and recent signs are not encouraging. Rather than condemning the terrorists and their Iranian patrons, some here have condemned their victims. That is exactly what a recent UN report on Gaza did, falsely equating the terrorists with those they targeted. For eight long years, Hamas fired from Gaza thousands of missiles, mortars and rockets on nearby Israeli cities. Year after year, as these missiles were deliberately hurled at our civilians, not a single UN resolution was passed condemning those criminal attacks. We heard nothing—absolutely nothing—from the UN Human Rights Council, a misnamed institution if there ever was one. In 2005, hoping to advance peace, Israel unilaterally withdrew from every inch of Gaza. It dismantled 21 settlements and uprooted over 8,000 Israelis. We didn't get peace. Instead we got an Iranian backed terror base fifty miles from Tel Aviv. Life in Israeli towns and cities next to Gaza became a nightmare. You see, the Hamas rocket attacks not only continued, they increased tenfold. Again, the UN was silent. It is in contrast to Netanyahu that the deadly inversion in Obama's worldview becomes clear. In Netanyahu's outlook, good people come to the UN and hold it up to their own independent moral standards. Putting forward moral challenges they expect the UN to live up to, they judge it by its response. (And the judgment is necessarily harsh.) But Obama reverses that approach. In this outlook, it is the UN that stands in judgment of the United States, which has to crawl to the UN begging for the world's approval. The issue here is far deeper than the two leaders' views of the UN. The difference is something in their souls. Ayn Rand described the theme of her novel *The Fountainhead* as "individualism versus collectivism, not in politics, but in man's soul." The story contrasted her hero Howard Roark, the innovator who upholds his own independent standards, against the glad-handing Peter Keating, whose goal is to conform to the standards set by others. Well, we have just discovered how much our president is a Peter Keating, a man with collectivism in his soul. If the thugs on the UN Human Rights Council don't approve of us, an independent man's immediate reaction is: to hell with them. Obama's instinctive reaction is that we have to do something to appease the thugs. This explains why the immediate diplomatic purpose of Obama's speech is likely to be a failure. Obama hopes to show that by appeasing and mollifying the UN, he can get them to reciprocate by agreeing to impose "tough" new economic sanctions against Iran. The sanctions aren't actually all that tough <http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=507374>, but that is beside the point. By communicating his desire for the UN's approval, and his willingness to put the UN first and America's interests second, Obama vastly decreases the chances that the UN will do *anything* to protect our interests. In a surreal moment, we had to hear that news from the *French*. In his own remarks <http://ambafrance-us.org/spip.php?article1432> to a UN conference on nuclear proliferation, French President Nicolas Sarkozy offered a biting response to Obama's call for a new round of diplomatic maneuvers against Iran: The people of the entire world are listening to what we're saying, to our promises, our commitments and our speeches, but we live in a real world, not a virtual world. We say: reductions must be made. And President Obama has even said, "I dream of a world without [nuclear weapons]." Yet before our very eyes, two countries are currently doing the exact opposite. Since 2005, Iran has violated five Security Council resolutions. Since 2005, Secretary-General, the international community has called on Iran to engage in dialogue. An offer of dialogue was made in 2005, an offer of dialogue was made in 2006, an offer of dialogue was made in 2007, an offer of dialogue was made in 2008, and another one was made in 2009. President Obama, I support the Americans' outstretched hand. But what did the international community gain from these offers of dialogue? Nothing. More enriched uranium, more centrifuges, and on top of that, a statement by Iranian leaders proposing to wipe a UN member state off the map. What are we doing? What conclusions are we drawing? There comes a time when facts are stubborn and decisions must be made. That line about facts being stubborn makes a little more sense if you know the background<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704471504574441402775482322.html>: Sarkozy wanted to use his speech to reveal Western intelligence agencies' discovery<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/26/world/middleeast/26nuke.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=all>of another hidden uranium enrichment facility in Iran. But the Obama administration pushed him to drop the announcement so as not to spoil the illusion of international comity at the UN. And how did Iran respond to all of this? By test-firing missiles in a deliberate show of defiance. As the old saying goes, free your mind and the rest will follow. The reverse is also true, as Obama is demonstrating: surrender to the collective in your soul—and surrender in the "real world" follows. *back to top* <#1240c97e905d12b6_TOC> ------------------------------ he subject line "unsubscribe." --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
