"The United States of America is prepared to use all elements of our power, including military force, to secure our core interests in the region.
"We will confront external aggression against our allies and partners, as we did in the Gulf War.
"We will ensure the free flow of energy from the region to the world. Although America is steadily reducing our own dependence on imported oil, the world still depends on the region's energy supply and a severe disruption could destabilize the entire global economy.
"We will dismantle terrorist networks that threaten our people. Wherever possible, we will build the capacity of our partners, respect the sovereignty of nations, and work to address the root causes of terror. But when it's necessary to defend the United States against terrorist attack, we will take direct action.
"And finally, we will not tolerate the development or use of weapons of mass destruction. Just as we consider the use of chemical weapons in Syria to be a threat to our own national security, we reject the development of nuclear weapons that could trigger a nuclear arms race in the region and undermine the global nonproliferation regime."
Think about what is being said here. First, Obama is saying that the U.S. has the right to use military force, including waging war and possibly murdering thousands upon thousands as it has in the past, in order to "secure our core interests in the region."
This region is over 5,000 miles from U.S. shores and home to hundreds of millions of people. Imagine how the U.S. establishment and media would respond if Vladimir Putin had declared to the UN that Russia would go to great lengths, including using all the military force at its disposal, to ensure its core interests in Latin America?
There would have been an immediate uproar, with Putin denounced as a madman and aggressor violating international norms; a political crisis would have ensued between the U.S. and Russia, and Russia would almost certainly have been threatened with war if it carried out such a declaration.
More fundamentally, doesn't this point to the reality that, despite Obama's denials, the U.S. capitalist-imperialist system depends on controlling far-flung regions around the world--in other words, it is a modern-day empire?
The Reality of U.S. "Core Interests"What is on Obama's list of core U.S. interests? One is confronting "external aggression against our allies and partners, as we did in the Gulf War." Who are the allies and partners he's talking about?
First, and foremost, the settler-colonial state of Israel, whose existence--as noted earlier--is based on the ethnic cleansing and towering, ongoing crimes against the Palestinian people, and war after war against its neighbors.
Then there are those models of "democracy, human rights," and equality for women that Obama proclaimed are core U.S. values. Perhaps here Obama is talking about the closest U.S. ally in the region, outside of Israel: Saudi Arabia, a hereditary monarchy with as few vestiges of formal democracy as any country on earth, and the last to ban women from voting. Days after Obama spoke at the UN, a website advocating the right of women to drive was shut down by the regime.
Then there's Egypt, which has been ruled by a U.S.-funded ($1.3 billion a year) and trained military for 30-plus years. After General Hosni Mubarak's fall in 2011, the U.S. claimed to be supporting the people and democracy. But this past July, Obama gave the go-ahead to a military coup ousting elected President Mohammed Morsi (which the U.S. to this day refuses to call a "coup"), and to its massacre of over 1,000 anti-coup demonstrators.
At one point in his speech, Obama justified support for such tyrannies by again whitewashing their depravity: "The United States will at times work with governments that do not meet, at least in our view, the highest international expectations, but who work with us on our core interests." As if Saudi and Egyptian torture chambers, and Israel's ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity are merely a notch below "the highest international expectations."
So again, how does propping up these obsolete, reactionary regime at the heart of the "old order in the region," which have inflicted so much suffering, make the U.S. a friend of the people and an agent of positive change?
What Is Ensuring "the Free Flow of Energy"to the World" Actually About?Then Obama says the U.S. is committed to ensuring "the free flow of energy from the region to the world. Although America is steadily reducing our own dependence on imported oil, the world still depends on the region's energy supply, and a severe disruption could destabilize the entire global economy."
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