Fireworks at Opening of UN General Assembly

The United Nations General Assembly opened in New York Wednesday with eye-opening speeches from leaders of three of the world's most controversial nations. United States president Barack Obama set the meeting abuzz with his first speech to the UN.

The governing body made of 192 nations is likely to be one of Obama's largest focuses in dealing with the numerous foreign policy challenges he and his administration face. He also faces a daunting task in regaining the trust of the body after it was largely undermined under recent US presidencies, including George W. Bush's administration, which sidestepped the UN and its advice when it invaded Iraq in March 2003.

Obama's standout talking point was when he pitched the Assembly on a different America under his presidency. "We have re-engaged the United Nations," he said, going on to lay out the importance of working together, as well as the policy changes he has already implemented nine months into his first year as president.

He also called out nations, though not by name, that he said have showed "reflexive anti-Americanism" in dealing with some of the more serious issues brought to the Assembly in recent years.

This proved to be a fitting starting point for two speakers who followed Obama: Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi, who spoke directly after Obama, and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Gadhafi (at left) made his first appearance at the annual meeting forty years into his reign as leader of Libya, but also as president of the African Union, which has been pressured recently to take control of several crises across the African continent.

He was allotted 15 minutes to speak, but went for 90 in a speech that urged the Security Council to adopt an African seat, but also strayed to hit on subjects ranging from the Taliban, to Iraq, an Israeli-Palestinian state, and the H1N1 virus. He also at one point said the Security Council should be renamed the "Terror Council" because of the power the veto nations have over the Council. He also tore up paper he represented as the UN Charter, which drew criticism from other leaders, including UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Despite his wide-ranging criticisms of the western world's "agenda" and his displeasure with the UN bodies in general, he did offer a glimmer of approval for Obama when he said he wished the new president would have a lengthy presidency.

Possibly the most important speech of the day, however, was made by Iran president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in his first major speech to the UN and first on US soil since his controversial election in June.

Ahmadinejad defended his presidency and called the election, rocked by massive protests after allegations of fraud, an homage to the people and "fully democratic." In classic Ahmadinejad fashion, he also delivered backhanded attacks on Israel and the United States, eventually prompting walkouts by several western diplomats, including a handful from the US and Canada.

The Security Council did break ground in dealing with one of its long-standing issues: dealing with Iran's nuclear ambitions. The five nations with veto power - China, Russia, Britain, France, and the United States, with Germany also signing on - issued a statement threatening further sanctions should Iran not cooperate in talks regarding its nuclear program, the two former being important because of their prior reluctance to take a major stance on Iran's nuclear ambitions because of trade agreements.

The nations set an October 1 meeting deadline by which Iran can decide whether or not to attend a meeting to begin negotiations regarding its nuclear program. UK Foreign Minister David Miliband read the statement, threatening harsh sanctions should Iran not comply. Ahmadinejad has acknowledged he will consider letting his nuclear scientists meet with western scientists to discuss the state's nuclear situation.

While the meeting's importance has diminished in recent years and been mostly a place for disgruntled leaders to voice their opinions or other leaders to push their agendas, Wednesday's meeting laid out many of the glaring problems facing the UN both internally and on the international scale.

It also sets quite the stage for Thursday and Friday's G20 Summit in Pittsburgh, where the organization will again meet to tackle the issues facing the global economy and financial institutions.

The two meetings are major steps in the Obama Administration's intent to improve foreign relations and to better coordinate on a global level with other nations to attack the global economic crisis as well as Afghanistan, Iraq, and other flash-point areas such as Somalia and Myanmar, where organized multi-national efforts are either under way or being discussed to stabilize the respective state governments.

Is The West Losing The War On Terror?

I just finished up a thesis for an International Relations course titled "Politics and War" in which I researched the so-called "war on terror" and how terrorism has affected the western allied states of the United States, United Kingdom, and Israel and the Middle Eastern states of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories. My basic conclusion, which is stated in the last selected paragraph, was that it is a possibility the western allies may be losing this war against terrorism. A few selections:

"The “war on terror” came to be under the guise of a war against anti-American Muslim extremists, propagated by George W. Bush and his cabinet and (some say hesitantly) supported by the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Tony Blair and other western allies in order to theoretically protect their state’s sovereignty and national security. However, nearly eight years later, it could be argued that the terrorists are winning. The Global Future defines terrorism as “the premeditated use or threat of violence perpetrated against noncombatants, usually intended to induce fear in a wider audience.” (Kegley, Raymond 2007, G-7) It is arguable that there have been few times in the history of America and the United Kingdom when such widespread fear of something or someone has been as far reaching and extensive as the “threat of terrorism”, and the fear-mongering is only fueled by the governments that say they seek so badly to quell it. The only example that immediately comes to mind of a situation even close to what has happened in the wake of terrorism in the west is the Red Scare and McCarthyism that happened in the 1950s in America, when anti-Communism sentiments washed over the United States and struck fear in a majority of Americans, propagated by the government, and for a while, unchecked by any other government body. Could the war terrorism go down as this generation’s Red Scare?"

"The United States saw one day of terrorist attacks on its soil when hijackers crashed two planes into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, and one, misguidedly, into a field in Pennsylvania. Not by any means a minor ordeal, but the actions that came in the wake of September 11, all done in the name of “national security” seem to have done more to make the nation insecure; not physically perhaps, but mentally at the very least. There was the anthrax scare, but other aside from that, there has been very little physical presence of any form of terrorism in the United States. Yet the government opened Guantanamo Bay, which allowed it throw in jail without probable cause other than the supposed threat of terrorism any person it wished, even if that person lay outside its normal jurisdiction. FISA has been strengthened since 2001 and the Patriot Act, which allows for wiretapping, search and seizure, and other surveillance not normally allowed under American law was widely used by the Bush administration and is now being used by the Obama administration (Thomas, Scraton 2002, 94-9). And while there have been no terrorist attacks on US soil since September 11 and the anthrax scares, American citizens still fear another terrorist attack (Associated Press 2006). Could the government be the root cause of this? In a July 2007 report by the National Intelligence Council titled “The Terrorist Threat To The US Homeland”, the Council states numerous times that “the US will face a…terrorist threat…from Islamic terrorist groups and cells.” (National Intelligence Council 2007) The report goes on to talk about the numerous threats facing the United States: “al-Qa’ida in Iraq,” “chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear [weapons],” and “other non-Muslim terrorist groups.” The report goes on to say that despite any real action by most terrorist groups in recent time, that the NIC perceives there to be a “heightened threat” of terrorism and that “[terrorists] would not hesitate to attack the Homeland.” The whole document reads almost as a propaganda statement by the Council, using vocabulary and rhetoric that strike up anti-terrorist sentiment and patriotism just as President Bush did following 9/11. But the most important thing documents like this and hundreds of others do is fuel the fear. The general masses of Americans tend to believe whatever the government says, frankly, because they do not have a choice. However, like any other large entity, it has an agenda and works as a giant public relations machine. And the American people have proven that they will largely follow that machine without much question, living on the fear and giving the government more leeway to do what it wishes."

"It is also this support of Israel by the two largest western powers that has fueled much of the anti-western sentiments that have led to the Muslim extremist uprising in the Middle East. Since the disputed lands of Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank have been such a flash point and rallying cause for the Muslim communities in the Middle East, for Israel to be supplied by the US and UK in its fight against what Muslims see as the Muslim community, it has made the two western states an easy and common target for Muslim extremists and a major recruiting tool used by terrorist organizations in what they see as a war against Islam. The United States’ assistance in helping develop nuclear capabilities and anti-ballistic shields in Israel have only furthered anti-American sentiments in Muslim states. And while the UK has not been as large of an arms supplier to Israel, their close inter-governmental ties have also formed many enemies amongst the Muslim community."

"Since 2001, the relations between the three aforementioned western states (the US, UK, and Israel) and its largely-Muslim Middle Eastern counterparts (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Palestinian territories) have worked in a cyclical nature as terrorism has built itself to be a great asset for Muslim extremists in the Middle East for use against the west. Since conventional tactics in combating terrorism were tried, but failed by these western states, the less-powerful terrorist community has often found itself with the upper hand and with its targets constantly on their heels in an attempt to guess what is coming next. They have also succeeded in using terrorism in the theoretical sense that they have struck a genuine fear in the western communities that a terrorist attack on domestic soil is a real and legitimate threat, which has only been propagated by the governments and media of the western states. And while these western governments attempt to find ways to combat terrorism in new ways using hybrids of classical and guerilla warfare, their secondary goals of establishing democracy and dominance in the mentioned Middle Eastern states has only fueled anti-Western sentiments among Muslim extremists and created a new pool of young Jihadists and other fighters who are also at the same time adapting their methods just as quickly as is the West. And because of the nature of the cell structure of terrorist groups, winning the so-called “war on terror” has proved much more difficult than any Western premier may have thought. And while they have perhaps quelled certain potential terrorist acts from damaging their national security and infrastructure, because of the fear of terrorism instilled in the people of the US and UK, especially by their own governments and media, it is quite unlikely that future terrorist actions will subside, and quite possible that the tensions and rifts between the West and Middle East could grow and deepen as a result, and that terrorists may end up winning this “war on terror”."