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In 2007, Obama Vowed Not to Stop Genocide in Iraq
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On August 7, 2014 @ 6:27 pm In The Point | 3 Comments
Here’s some context for the controversy as White House spokesman Earnest said that Obama intervenes in genocide on a “case by case basis“.
This quote has made the rounds over the years…
“The United States has a moral obligation anytime you see humanitarian catastrophes. When you see a genocide in Rwanda, Bosnia or in Darfur, that is a stain on all of us, that’s a stain on our souls…We can’t say ‘never again’ and then allow it to happen again, and as a president of the United States I don’t intend to abandon people or turn a blind eye to slaughter.”
- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, 2007.
…it’s also empty words. It’s the kind of talk that fooled plenty of people even though it was a more elaborate #BringBackOurGirls
Here’s a much more relevant quote from back then about the use of military force to stop genocide.
As he campaigned in New Hampshire, in 2007, Obama said that he would not leave troops in Iraq even to stop genocide. “Well, look, if that’s the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have three hundred thousand troops in the Congo right now, where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife, which we haven’t done,” he said. “We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven’t done.”
Obama didn’t just role out using military force to stop genocide in Iraq, but also to stop genocide in the Congo and Sudan.
When it came to Libya, Obama claimed that he attacked the country to stop genocide in Benghazi. In fact there was no genocide in Benghazi. Obama was lying and using military force to promote Political Islam and the objectives of the Arab Spring.
Obama’s real position was the familiar one that military intervention should only be carried out for ideological or political objectives, not to stop genocide.
And yet it’s worth considering the mountain of hypocrisy in his rhetoric justifying his illegal Libyan war.
For generations, the United States of America has played a unique role as an anchor of global security and as an advocate for human freedom. Mindful of the risks and costs of military action, we are naturally reluctant to use force to solve the world’s many challenges. But when our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act. That’s what happened in Libya over the course of these last six weeks…
“Now we saw regime forces on the outskirts of the city. We knew that if we wanted — if we waited one more day, Benghazi, a city nearly the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.” …
There will be times, though, when our safety is not directly threatened, but our interests and our values are.
It’s worth asking why the only time that Obama’s values were threatened was when the Jihadists in Libya were losing to Gaddafi.
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