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MIDDLE EAST | NYT NOW
In U.N. Speech, Obama Vows to Fight ISIS
Network of Death
By MARK LANDLER SEPT. 24, 2014
UNITED NATIONS President Obama on Wednesday charted a muscular new
course for the United States in a turbulent world, telling the United Nations
General Assembly in a bluntly worded speech that the American military would
work with allies to dismantle the Islamic States network of death and warning
Russia that it would pay for its bullying of Ukraine.
Two days after ordering airstrikes on dozens of militant targets in Syria, Mr.
Obama issued a fervent call to arms against the Islamic State the once-
reluctant warrior now apparently resolved to waging a twilight struggle against
Islamic extremism for the remainder of his presidency.
Today, I ask the world to join in this effort, Mr. Obama said, seeking to
buttress a global coalition that he said would train and equip troops to fight the
group, also known as ISIL, starve it of financial resources, and halt the flow of
foreign recruits to its ranks.
Those who have joined ISIL should leave the battlefield while they can,
Mr. Obama said, foreshadowing the blows to come. For we will not succumb to
threats, and we will demonstrate that the future belongs to those who build, not
those who destroy. The brutality of the militants, he said, forces us to look into
the heart of darkness.
Even so, Mr. Obama said, the threat from the Islamic State was only the
most urgent of an onslaught of global challenges that have given the United
States no choice but to take the lead: from resisting Russias aggression against
Ukraine to coordinating a response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa; from
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brokering a new unity government in Afghanistan to organizing a new campaign
to confront climate change.
It was a starkly different president from the one who addressed skeptical
world leaders at the General Assembly last year, two weeks after calling off a
missile strike on Syria over its use of chemical weapons. In that speech, Mr.
Obama offered a shrunken list of American priorities in the Middle East and
showed little appetite for the charged rhetoric or interventionist policies of his
predecessor, George W. Bush.
Mr. Obama on Wednesday spoke more like a wartime leader, reaffirming his
determination to work with other countries but leaving little doubt that the
United States would act as the ultimate guarantor of an international order that
he said was under acute stress.
As if to underscore his new role, Mr. Obama headed a rare leaders session of
the United Nations Security Council, which unanimously passed a resolution
requiring countries to pass laws against traveling abroad to join terrorist groups
or financing those efforts.
If there was ever a challenge in our interconnected world that cannot be
met by one nation alone, it is this, he said, terrorists crossing borders and
threatening to unleash unspeakable violence.
For all the hardening of Mr. Obamas tone, though, it remained unclear
whether the speech represented a fundamental rethinking of his policy or a
reluctant response to the threat posed by the Islamic State, brought home for
many Americans after the militants posted Internet videos of American hostages
who were beheaded.
The strategy he outlined would protect the United States from terrorist
threats by crippling the Islamic State and other militants like the Khorasan
Group, which was also targeted this week by American airstrikes, and not by
trying to transform the societies in which they took root, as did the architects of
the Iraq war.
Still, his remarks clearly seemed intended to get past months in which the
president appeared visibly conflicted about the proper use of American military
force in the Middle East an ambivalence that opened him to criticism that he
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was feckless and irresolute.
In addressing the Ukraine crisis, Mr. Obama used his strongest language yet,
portraying Russias incursions as an affront to the principles of the United
Nations and promising to levy a cost on President Vladimir V. Putin. He accused
Russia of conspiring with Ukrainian separatists to obstruct an investigation into
a downed Malaysian jetliner.
This is a vision of the world in which might makes right, Mr. Obama said,
a world in which one nations borders can be redrawn by another, and civilized
people are not allowed to recover the remains of their loved ones because of the
truth that might be revealed.
The 39-minute speech was also notable for what he did not say. Last year, he
singled out nuclear negotiations with Iran and Syrias civil war as two of his top
priorities in the Middle East. On Wednesday, he mentioned them in only a
cursory manner.
Iran, he said, should not let the chance for a nuclear agreement slip by. But
he made no reference to Irans president, Hassan Rouhani, who has made clear
he does not want to shake hands with Mr. Obama this week, a gesture long-
awaited as a symbol of thawed relations between Iran and the United States.
Privately, American officials have expressed deep skepticism about the status of
the negotiations with Tehran, and Mr. Obamas subdued remarks suggested he
shares that pessimism.
The president also did not single out President Bashar al-Assad of Syria for
criticism, as he did last year, over the use of chemical weapons, though he spoke
of the brutality of the Assad regime. Mr. Assad has voiced support for the
American-led strikes in Syria, and his air force has not interfered with American
warplanes entering Syrian airspace.
In a sign of how the fight against the Islamic State has reordered priorities,
Mr. Obama pledged to train and equip moderate rebels in Syria something he
long resisted and labeled a fantasy. He repeated calls for a political settlement to
end the civil war there, acknowledging that cynics may argue that such an
outcome can never come to pass.
Mr. Obama only fleetingly addressed another of last years priorities, the
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Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, delivering a mild rebuke to the government of
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The violence engulfing the region today
has made too many Israelis ready to abandon the hard work of peace, he said.
Thats something worthy of reflection within Israel, he added, in a line that was
not in his prepared text.
With much of the days focus on the threat from foreign fighters, Mr. Obama
took pains to address it. In an echo of the 2009 speech in Cairo that was aimed at
the Islamic world, he issued a direct appeal to young Muslims, urging them to
resist the blandishments of violent jihadism.
You come from a great tradition that stands for education, not ignorance;
innovation, not destruction; the dignity of life, not murder, Mr. Obama said.
Those who call you away from this path are betraying this tradition, not
defending it.
Also in keeping with past practice, he acknowledged that the United States is
wrestling its own demons. In a summer marked by instability in the Middle East
and Eastern Europe, he said, I know the world also took notice of the small
American city of Ferguson, Mo., where a young man was killed, and a
community was divided.
The speech was the centerpiece of a hectic three days of diplomacy for Mr.
Obama, and he appeared to make strides in broadening the coalition against the
Islamic State. On Wednesday, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain recalled
Parliament to meet Friday to vote on joining American-led airstrikes in Iraq.
Mr. Cameron lost a vote in Parliament last year when he sought approval for
bombing Syria, alongside the United States, after Mr. Assads use of chemical
weapons. But he told the BBC that these airstrikes were the right thing to do, and
he was confident Parliament would support them. As ever with our country, he
said, when we are threatened in this way, we should not turn away from what
needs to be done.
Mr. Obama also met with Iraqs new prime minister, Haider al-Abadi. He
praised Mr. Abadi as the right person to heal Iraqs sectarian rifts, and said he
recognizes this is not something that is going to be easy, and it is not going to
happen overnight.
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Steven Erlanger contributed reporting from London.
A version of this article appears in print on September 25, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with
the headline: President, at U.N., Vows to Counter Extremist Threat.
2014 The New York Times Company