In U.N. Speech, Obama Vows to Fight ISIS ‘Network of Death’ - NYTimes.com

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MIDDLE EAST | NYT NOW

In U.N. Speech, Obama Vows to Fight ISISNetwork 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 bullyingof 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 tobuttress 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 ofthe 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 acursory 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
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In U.N. Speech, Obama Vows to Fight ISIS ‘Network of Death’ - NYTimes.com

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