Barack Obama’s Final Speech to the United Nations as President

President Obama's Final United Nations Speech: Transcript

Obama did what he does best; he shared a nuanced and incisive perspective about the direction in which political action should be directed

he was eloquont
and he offered a number of criticisms that impede the causes of peace; from fundamentalism misappropriating great religions to the Palestinians failure to acknowledge israel's existence, to israel's refusal to peacefully leave the occupied lands of another people
he especially chided current russian policy and actions
Obama pointed to education - for all - to be one obvious mechanism to push the world's society forward, taking specific aim at the middle east and africa being opposed to educate their female populations
he noted that younger people are more inclined to look past race and nationality to instead do what is right
and while he noted America's many shortcomings, he acknowledged that on balance, the USA was a force for good in the world:

From the depths of the greatest financial crisis of our time, we coordinated our response to avoid further catastrophe and return the global economy to growth. We’ve taken away terrorist safe havens, strengthened the nonproliferation regime, resolved the Iranian nuclear issue through diplomacy. We opened relations with Cuba, helped Colombia end Latin America’s longest warm, and we welcome a democratically elected leader of Myanmar to this Assembly. Our assistance is helping people feed themselves, care for the sick, power communities across Africa, and promote models of development rather than dependence. And we have made international institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund more representative, while establishing a framework to protect our planet from the ravages of climate change.

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while i would encourage reading his entire speech, i believe this is the essence of his message:

I want to suggest to you today that we must go forward, and not backward. I believe that as imperfect as they are, the principles of open markets and accountable governance, of democracy and human rights and international law that we have forged remain the firmest foundation for human progress in this century. I make this argument not based on theory or ideology, but on facts — facts that all too often, we forget in the immediacy of current events. Here’s the most important fact: The integration of our global economy has made life better for billions of men, women and children. Over the last 25 years, the number of people living in extreme poverty has been cut from nearly 40 percent of humanity to under 10 percent. That’s unprecedented. And it’s not an abstraction. It means children have enough to eat; mothers don’t die in childbirth.
Meanwhile, cracking the genetic code promises to cure diseases that have plagued us for centuries. The Internet can deliver the entirety of human knowledge to a young girl in a remote village on a single hand-held device. In medicine and in manufacturing, in education and communications, we’re experiencing a transformation of how human beings live on a scale that recalls the revolutions in agriculture and industry. And as a result, a person born today is more likely to be healthy, to live longer, and to have access to opportunity than at any time in human history.

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[emphasis added by bubba]

Instead of talking about everybody else's apparent shortcomings, wouldn't it have been nice had President Obama been able to regale those in attendance with a litany of the actions he, himself, had taken in his nearly 8 years in office to advance world peace and reconciliation as well as using his powerful office for good, rather than just as an ego play.

President Obama's speech, and that of my country's Prime Minister Trudeau, are both prime examples of the virtual uselessness of the United Nations as it exists today. It is a bloated, self-indulgent, preening post for all and sundry who can't get enough of their own voices. Perhaps no greater waste of valuable taxpayer dollars in today's world than the United Nations.

justabubba said:

President Obama's Final United Nations Speech: Transcript

Obama did what he does best; he shared a nuanced and incisive perspective about the direction in which political action should be directed

he was eloquont
and he offered a number of criticisms that impede the causes of peace; from fundamentalism misappropriating great religions to the Palestinians failure to acknowledge israel's existence, to israel's refusal to peacefully leave the occupied lands of another people
he especially chided current russian policy and actions
Obama pointed to education - for all - to be one obvious mechanism to push the world's society forward, taking specific aim at the middle east and africa being opposed to educate their female populations
he noted that younger people are more inclined to look past race and nationality to instead do what is right
and while he noted America's many shortcomings, he acknowledged that on balance, the USA was a force for good in the world:

while i would encourage reading his entire speech, i believe this is the essence of his message:
[emphasis added by bubba]

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Oh. He gives good jaw jaw alright. And he did say some things that needed saying. He might have wanted to be more specific and pointed out that it was the US that was mostly responsible for the extraordinary development that had brought so many out of subsistence circumstances. But maybe that would have been too blatant.
Where he should have been more explicit though, was in the global government thing. That he mentioned it, however, was good.

CanadaJohn said:

Instead of talking about everybody else's apparent shortcomings, wouldn't it have been nice had President Obama been able to regale those in attendance with a litany of the actions he, himself, had taken in his nearly 8 years in office to advance world peace and reconciliation as well as using his powerful office for good, rather than just as an ego play.

President Obama's speech, and that of my country's Prime Minister Trudeau, are both prime examples of the virtual uselessness of the United Nations as it exists today. It is a bloated, self-indulgent, preening post for all and sundry who can't get enough of their own voices. Perhaps no greater waste of valuable taxpayer dollars in today's world than the United Nations.

Click to expand...

Well, the U.N. isn't there so that politicians can show up and brag about how awesome they think they are. It's also not actually there to get anything done.

It's main purpose is keeping as many disputes tied up in bureaucracy as possible so that we do not instead have a system where tangled alliances pull everyone into a global conflict again. Yes, I am suggesting that it is actually supposed to be mostly useless in effect and we should actually want it to stay that way.

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Mr Person said:

Well, the U.N. isn't there so that politicians can show up and brag about how awesome they think they are. It's also not actually there to get anything done.

It's main purpose is keeping as many disputes tied up in bureaucracy as possible so that we do not instead have a system where tangled alliances pull everyone into a global conflict again. Yes, I am suggesting that it is actually supposed to be mostly useless in effect and we should actually want it to stay that way.

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That sounds like a liberal philosophy - bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy. Spend heaps of taxpayer dollars so that thousands of useless tits have a job conferring with other useless tits, getting nothing accomplished. But hey, there's a lot of additional economic activity in NYC feeding the tits, chauffeuring them around, etc., so it's all good, right?

Mr Person said:

Well, the U.N. isn't there so that politicians can show up and brag about how awesome they think they are. It's also not actually there to get anything done.

It's main purpose is keeping as many disputes tied up in bureaucracy as possible so that we do not instead have a system where tangled alliances pull everyone into a global conflict again. Yes, I am suggesting that it is actually supposed to be mostly useless in effect and we should actually want it to stay that way.

Click to expand...

CanadaJohn said:

That sounds like a liberal philosophy - bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy.

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Except that I didn't say and you couldn't possibly honestly conclude that I was saying "bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy."

I'll shorten it this time: It prevents hot wars between major powers, and especially between large networks of major powers.

CanadaJohn said:

Spend heaps of taxpayer dollars so that thousands of useless tits have a job conferring with other useless tits, getting nothing accomplished. But hey, there's a lot of additional economic activity in NYC feeding the tits, chauffeuring them around, etc., so it's all good, right?

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That has nothing to do with what I said. It just seems to be like an excuse to divert the subject to stupid and dishonest ranting about "the left" writ large.

Do your posts always do that?




If you want to tie it back to what I actually said while still disagreeing with me, you should make out an argument that the monetary costs of running the U.N. are bigger than the monetary and in-life costs of hot wars between major powers, and especially between large networks of major powers.

If you did that, your post would probably be wrong, but at least it wouldn't be dishonest.