Pete Wehner slices and dices the president’s deeply disturbing speech to the U.N.

The worst of many awful parts of the speech is that the president engages in Israel-bashing before a group that includes many of the worst sort of thugs and dictators. President Obama missed the opportunity to remind the world that Israel has an absolute right to exist, and that no serious negotiation can begin until that right is recognized by all the powers in the Palestinian territories. The president’s slam on the legitimacy of Israeli settlements is a red herring, and everyone knows it. The obstacle to peace is Hamas and every other extremist who wants Israel destroyed, not construction within previously established lines of construction.

The second worst part of the speech was the studied refusal bluntly to name Iran as an oppressor of its own people and an exporter of terror and breaker of international rules. Part of the essence of appeasement is the refusal by free states to speak bluntly about their fascist counterparts. The president’s meaningless rhetoric about “certain truths which are self-evident” must be a very bitter pill for the dissidents of iran in prison, and their families and friends, who were looking for a statement of solidarity, not an invitation for the fanatics to continue their repression under the guise of each country pursuing “a path rooted in the culture of its people and its past traditions.”

What an embarrassment, but also how predictable given the president’s long standing hostility to Israel and his reflexive desire to not offend our enemies.

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