At the United Nations, President Obama called for world action against what he termed “the danger posed by religiously motivated fanatics.” While claiming he was taking a “narrowly focused” approach, he identified danger zones from Afghanistan to Africa and a wide range of challenges to be addressed, including high unemployment, food and water scarcity, and corruption, as well as sectarian conflict.

The day before, at the Clinton Global Initiative, the President laid out an even more ambitious program. Naming political prisoners in Russia, China, Egypt, and elsewhere, he declared that the United States stood squarely behind them, and for promoting freedom and “civil society” wherever they were in danger. His country, he told his audience, “will not stop speaking out for the human rights of all people … because that’s part of who we are, and … what we stand for.”

These words echo George W. Bush’s, when he pledged, in his second inaugural address, to promote freedom and democracy throughout the world. Other presidents have expressed similar views and even acted on them, most famously, Woodrow Wilson.

The United States has often seen itself as a country founded on ideals, an “exceptional” nation with a mission to promote liberty throughout the world.

However, Barack Obama has been among the most cautious presidents in making this claim. If he has now changed his mind, will he also match his words with actions?

Sources:

United Nations speech

Clinton Global Initiative speech

Bush Second Inaugural

Obama is right to condemn the Islamic State’s brutality. But ISIS doesn’t have a monopoly on savagery. Thirteen years after the 9/11 attacks, the United States’ brutal, costly, and counter-productive “war on terror” has enveloped the entire Middle East. Doubling down on his predecessor’s war crimes, Obama’s drone campaign has exacted hundreds of civilian casualties. Taking the lives of innocents by remote control doesn’t make killing any less barbaric.

Adding insult to injury, Obama invoked the names of James Foley and Steven Sotloff – the two American journalists beheaded by ISIS – in a cynical effort to promote perpetual war. Obama’s sympathy for the slain journalists belies his administration’s habitual abuse of the Espionage Act to intimidate whistleblowers and wage war on journalists. So much for Obama’s “principled” defense of journalists and press freedom.

Most galling of all, Obama concluded his speech by quoting a civilian, recently “trapped on a distant mountain,” who praised America’s so-called humanitarian intervention in Northern Iraq. Would that Obama, the war hawks in Washington, and the mainstream media actually listened to civilians – from Yemen and Somalia to Pakistan and Afghanistan – who routinely denounce American exceptionalism, and the brutality that so often accompanies it.

For Speak Your Mind, this is Kevin Howley.

Sources:

Downie, L. Jr. & Rafsky, S. (2013, October 10). Leak investigations and surveillance in post-9/11 America. Committee to Protect Journalists.

Ridley, Y. (2012, May 12). Bush convicted of war crimes in absentia. Foreign Policy Journal.

Serle, J. (2014, March 12). Countries must investigate civilian drone death claims, says UN investigator Ben Emmerson. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

Solomon, N. (2014, August 4). Journalism groups rally around petition supporting James Risen. Columbia Journalism Review.

Thousands protest US drone war in Pakistan. (2013, November 25). Democracy Now!