[D66] Deceit and delusion at the United Nations

[Oto]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/09/25/pers-s25.html

Deceit and delusion at the United Nations
25 September 2014

Having launched yet another illegal war, President Barack Obama came
before the United Nations Wednesday to justify American actions around
the world and demand that all nations fall into line behind the US drive
for world hegemony.

The speech was a collection of declamations, threats and ultimatums
linked together by hollow slogans and clichés. It was delivered in a
halting, ritualistic manner, one pronouncement following another,
separated by long pauses and a pursing of the lips, without any attempt
to make a coherent argument.

But what above all distinguished the speech was the complete disconnect
between its assertions and political reality. Obama’s lies were so
extreme and brazen, they took on a delusional character. When the world
political situation has reached a point where those in power cannot
acknowledge a single truth, this in itself is an expression of an
extraordinary level of crisis of the entire political and economic order.

All the lies and hypocrisy were summed up in Obama’s denunciation of “a
vision of the world in which might makes right—a world in which one
nation’s borders can be redrawn by another… America stands for something
different,” he claimed. “We believe that right makes might—that bigger
nations should not be able to bully smaller ones; that people should be
able to choose their own future.” [Emphasis added]. This statement was
made by the representative of the world’s most violent and menacing
country, one that has, in direct violation of the UN charter, made
preventive war the foundation of its foreign policy, proclaiming an
unlimited right to intervene militarily wherever its economic, political
or geostrategic interests are at stake.

Since it emerged as an imperialist power at the end of the 19th century,
the United States has arrogated to itself the right to bully and impose
its will on small and large countries alike. The past quarter century in
particular has seen an unending and escalating series of wars,
invasions, covert operations and bombings carried out by American
imperialism against countries in every corner of the globe. In its
military actions, American imperialism is responsible for the deaths of
hundreds of thousands of people.

One could cite, among others, the invasion of Panama in 1989, the First
Gulf War against Iraq in 1991, the invasion of Haiti in 1994, the
bombing of Sudan in 1998, the war against Serbia in 1999, and the
invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. Under
Obama, the United States has led an invasion against Libya, stoked civil
war in Syria aimed at overthrowing the government of Bashar al-Assad and
carried out drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

In its drive to control the world, American imperialism is leading
mankind toward a new catastrophic world war. Obama’s peroration began
with the assertion: “The shadow of World War that existed at the
founding of this institution has been lifted, and the prospect of war
between major powers reduced.” This was said even as Washington and NATO
continue to turn Eastern Europe into an armed camp and use the civil war
in Ukraine—a crisis of their own making—to bring the world to the brink
of a military conflict between the West and nuclear-armed Russia.

Only minutes later, Obama issued a clear threat of military action
against Moscow, declaring, “We will reinforce our NATO Allies and uphold
our commitment to collective self-defense.”

In Asia, Washington is pursuing an aggressive diplomatic, economic and
military offensive against China. And the new war in Syria threatens to
engulf the entire Middle East and trigger a confrontation between the US
and its allies and the Syrian regime’s backers, Iran and Russia. In
direct contradiction to Obama’s claim, the prospect of war between the
major powers has never been greater.

Coming to the main topic of his speech, the launching of an endless
“generational” war, ostensibly against Islamist terrorism, Obama
declared that “on issue after issue, we cannot rely on a rule book
written for a different century.” In other words, the UN Charter, which
bans war as an instrument of foreign policy and bars countries from
intervening in the civil wars of other countries, no longer applies.

Obama went on to describe the disaster that exists in Iraq and Syria,
attributing it entirely to what he called “the cancer of violent
extremism” in the Muslim world. But everyone in the audience was well
aware that the responsibility for the catastrophe in that region rests
overwhelmingly with American imperialism.

In one breath, Obama declared, “It is time to acknowledge the
destruction wrought by proxy wars and terror campaigns between Sunni and
Shia across the Middle East,” while in the next he boasted, “Together
with our partners, America is training and equipping the Syrian
opposition [overwhelmingly Sunni] to be a counterweight to the
terrorists of ISIL and the brutality of the [Shia-related] Assad regime.”

It is not possible here to catalogue all of the colossal lies crammed
into Obama’s 45-minute speech. But his presentation of the crisis in
Ukraine exemplifies the collision between his statements and reality.

“Here are the facts,” he said. “After the people of Ukraine mobilized
popular protests and calls for reform, their corrupt president fled.
Against the will of the government in Kyiv, Crimea was annexed. Russia
poured arms into eastern Ukraine, fueling violent separatists and a
conflict that has killed thousands.”

Of course, the “popular protests” were financed and orchestrated by the
United States and Germany and led by armed fascists who glorify the
Ukrainian collaborators with the Nazi occupation and mass murder of
Ukrainian Jews.

The elected president, who was pro-Russian, was overthrown in a coup,
and the illegal government that replaced him, staffed with neo-Nazis and
ultra-nationalists, was rejected by the majority of residents in the
eastern part of the country.

The vast bulk of the thousands who were subsequently killed in eastern
Ukraine died at the hands of the US-backed Ukrainian military and
fascist-dominated militias that laid siege to cities controlled by
pro-Russian separatists.

Only last month, Washington’s ally in the Middle East, Israel, was
carrying out the savage bombing of defenseless Palestinians in Gaza,
killing more than 2,200 people, the vast majority of them civilians.

It is hard to say what is more frightening, that he is fully aware of
the chasm between his assertions and reality, or he has become so
detached from reality that he actually believes his proclamations.
Future historians may very well look back on this speech as a milestone
in the American ruling class’s loss of its bearings as it hurled mankind
toward another world war.

Barry Grey