Why do all American presidents end up speaking as if their speeches were written by a grade-B Science Fiction film maker? Does it, perchance, have anything to do with the collapse in the popular intellectual standards in the Empire of the West? With the dumbing down of media and press? With the hard polico/economic realities - that, like for Hollywood blockbusters, he must aim for the dim 12-year olds in the audience (regardless of their chronological ages?) Is he not, in his heart of hearts, a bit embarrassed to be overtly channeling for JWB? FROM THE FINANCIAL TIMES Obama calls on Muslim world to confront ‘violent extremism’ President Barack Obama called on Wednesday for the Muslim world to embark on a “generational task” of confronting the “cancer of violent extremism” as the US and its allies conducted a new round of air strikes in Syria. In a sharply worded speech to the UN, Mr Obama challenged other countries in the Middle East-including US allies – to do more to dismantle the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant’s “network of death”. Speaking two days after he ordered the first US air strikes against Islamist militants in Syria, Mr Obama framed the struggle against the extremist group, known as Isis, in the stark moral terms that he has often been reluctant to use. “There can be no reasoning – no negotiation – with this brand of evil,” he said at the UN General Assembly. “The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force.” The warlike rhetoric represented a stark change for a president who was elected to end the conflict in Iraq and who only last year claimed at the UN that America was “shifting away from a perpetual war footing”. Instead, Mr Obama finds himself fighting a new war in Iraq and taking military action in Syria that he had long resisted. His speech appeared to set the stage for a much deeper military and political commitment in the Middle East than anything he has indicated before. Shortly after his speech, the Pentagon said the US “and its Arab partners” were conducting a third round of strikes in Syria, with targets including oil facilities operated by Isis. The action follows months in which Isis militants have swept across the region, seizing control of a swath of Syria and neighbouring Iraq. Wednesday’s address to the UN was the centrepiece of a frenetic three days of American diplomacy in New York, aimed at broadening the international coalition the US is mounting to take on Isis. A militant group in Algeria that says it is allied to Isis separately beheaded a French hostage in retaliation to French participation in air strikes in Iraq, according to Site Intelligence Group, which tracks extremist groups. While Mr Obama’s speech on Wednesday talked about strengthening international rules and co-operating on issues such as the Ebola outbreak, the president’s tone was often reminiscent of his predecessor George W Bush. After the address, the UN Security Council session voted unanimously in favour of a resolution that compels countries to prevent citizens travelling overseas to join terrorist groups. Russia and China both strongly approved the resolution. While the Obama administration has celebrated the fact that five regional allies took part in air strikes in Syria on Monday, Mr Obama appeared to criticise some of those same countries which have supported extremist elements in Syria.
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 03:03:41 +0000
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