Transcript of the speech here, video here:
The responses:
-“A post-American speech by our first post-American President.” Former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton.
-Obama’s UN Speech, Dissected, by Peter Wehner.
“But I cannot escape a depressing thought, one I hope is proved to be wrong over time: that Barack Obama, even though he is the leader of America, is constantly placing himself above it.”
-Staggering Naïveté, by Brett Shaefer.
“Obama’s willingness to accommodate anti-American views at the U.N. was offensive.”
-Prez Comes Across as a Gullible Sap, by Rich Lowry.
“Has an American president ever expressed such implicit hostility toward his own nation’s pre-eminence in world affairs? Or so relished in recalling its failings, or so readily elevated himself and his own virtues over those of his country?”
-Not Just Silly, by Jennifer Rubin.
“Obama is at home at the UN — where democracy, human rights, property rights, the rule of law, and most everything else are subordinated to the task of providing economic goodies and political prestige to those who could not otherwise obtain them. And Obama is just the figure to help those folks get what they want.”
- Obama and ‘Solutionism’ at the UN, by Ron Rosenbaum.
-The Naif in Chief, at the New York Post.
“What a truly pathetic performance.”
-Bayefsky’s UN Update, by Robert Costa.
“It is becoming very plain that the president himself is on the wrong side of history. He stood before a crowd of largely undemocratic leaders and said he was on their side. Instead of leading, the president sounded confused and relativistic, claiming that there is no one form of democracy and that everybody quite reasonably has their own take on what democracy means. Everyone there knew that those words are exactly how the Cubans and Chinese speak in U.N. circles. The president’s deliberate ambiguity on the nature of democracy was well-received at the U.N., but it did nothing to enhance America’s moral stature and leadership capacity in the world today.”
*Bitter Harvests To Come, by Victor Davis Hanson.
“The key question is at what point will the American people sense that the Obama feel-good magic comes at the expense of long-term American interests — and that making some unsavory characters like our president now, will mean only trouble ahead for the country itself and its friends abroad.”
-Obama’s Confession, at NRO.
“Underneath the vast rock-candy mountain of Obama’s insubstantial rhetoric, this was a speech that was both hard-headedly “realist” and naively utopian. “Realist” in that it sought deals with governments of all stripes by promiscuously making concessions to them while staunchly refusing to criticize their faults; utopian in that it had no additional or more persuasive strategy to advance its ambitious aims.”
