UN speech: Obama warns IS to leave battlefield

Calls for dismantling the ‘network of death’

UNITED NATIONS:

US President Barack Obama used his annual speech to the United Nations on Wednesday to warn Islamic State fighters to “leave the battlefield while they can” and asked the world to back a US-led campaign against the militants in Iraq and Syria.

In a speech to the UN General Assembly in New York, Obama said Islamic State must be destroyed, as British Prime Minister David Cameron weighed whether his country would join the military drive that includes US Arab allies. Before Obama spoke, US-led airstrikes for the third time this week pounded Islamic State targets. Obama used graphic language to condemn Islamic State’s methods, saying the militants had used rape as a weapon of war, gunned down children, dumped bodies in mass graves, and beheaded their victims.

“No God condones this terror,” he said. “The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force. So the United States of America will work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death,” he said in a speech that ran to just under 40 minutes. Obama, whose legacy is based in part on his decision to extract US forces from Iraq, said the United States does not intend to occupy any countries, but “will support Iraqis and Syrians fighting to reclaim their communities.”

“Today, I ask the world to join in this effort. Those who have joined ISIL should leave the battlefield while they can,” he said, using an acronym for Islamic State. Obama used his annual address to the 193-nation General Assembly to send messages to Russia to back down from its actions against Ukraine, for Iran to “not let this opportunity pass” to forge a nuclear deal and, indirectly, for China to ease its pressure on its Asia-Pacific neighbors. In a departure from his prepared text, Obama urged Israel to extend an olive branch to the Palestinians after a summer of violence in Gaza. Too many Israelis, he said, were ready to abandon the hard work of peace and added that this was something “worthy of reflection within Israel.”

“Because let’s be clear: the status quo in the West Bank and Gaza is not sustainable. We cannot afford to turn away from this effort,” he said.

Obama’s over-arching message was aimed at bolstering the fight, both militarily and diplomatically, against Islamic State, a group whose rapid rise and seizure of broad swaths of Syria and Iraq have stunned the Middle East. 

Published in The Express Tribune, September 25^th, 2014.