President Obama's G20 Closing Remarks

Earlier today, President Obama made remarks at the closing of the G20 Conference in Pittsburgh, PA. The President has, once again, reminded the world that the United States faced a grave economic situation when he took office. Here at the Grover Cleveland Society, we agree. The economy was in dire straits. However, we do not agree with the Presidents assessment that the actions he has taken have made lasting, positive economic results. He said “[i]t's worth recalling the situation we faced six months ago -- a contracting economy, skyrocketing unemployment, stagnant trade, and a financial system that was nearly frozen. Some were warning of a second Great Depression. But because of the bold and coordinated action that we took, millions of jobs have been saved or created; the decline in output has been stopped; financial markets have come back to life; and we stopped the crisis from spreading further to the developing world.” The President may claim to have saved or created millions of jobs, yet our economy has lost 3.7 million jobs in the time since the President took office(1).
The President continued by stating “we agreed to take concrete steps to move forward with tough, new financial regulations so that crises like this can never happen again.” We at the Grover Cleveland Society believe it was government regulation that caused the crisis. May we remind you of the infamous Community Reinvestment Act (2).
The President made many more points tonight in Pittsburgh. He continued to push his agenda for global governance. “[W]e agreed to reform our system of global economic cooperation and governance. We can no longer meet the challenges of the 21st century economy with 20th century approaches.” He continued with “I've called for a new era of engagement that yields real results for our people -- an era when nations live up to their responsibilities, and act on behalf of our shared security and prosperity.” While we agree that America has a responsibility to the international community, we feel that President Obama’s comments reveal a lack of belief in America’s sovereignty. We have witnessed President Obama gleefully shaking hands and exchanging niceties with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez (3). We have heard him remark that he will meet with foreign dictators without precondition (4). We believe this type of diplomacy is dangerous and hurts our long-term legitimacy as a free republic and a world power. Already, the Iranian government has refused to meet with President Obama without precondition (5). So now Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is setting conditions before he will be willing to meet with the US President? May we remind the President that Iran has an atrocious human rights record (6)? May we also remind President Obama that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a holocaust denier (7)? Is it not embarrassing to any other Americans that a holocaust denier and third-world dictator won’t meet with our President, the man who is supposed to represent the most powerful nation in the world? What type of preconditions would Ahmadinejad have before meeting with President Obama, and would President Obama be willing to agree to them?
Finally, it is interesting to note that the President’s final question was on the subject of sanctions against Iran. “Mr. President. You just mentioned sanctions that have bite. What kinds of sanctions -- and I know you can't get into details -- but what kinds of sanctions at all would have bite with Iran? Do you really think any kind of sanction would have an effect on somebody like Ahmadinejad?” We believe that this question reveals that even the media has acknowledged the ineffectiveness of diplomacy on ruthless dictators, like Ahmadinejad. We at the Grover Cleveland Society hope that the President will realize this as well.
For a full text of President Obama’s speech, click here.
(1) http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet;jsessionid=a230faef6de52265316b
(2) http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo125.html
(3) http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2009/04/17/2009-04-17_president_obama_meets_hugo_chavez_and_opens_door_to_change_in_cuba_policy.html
(4) www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSFSUbMWenU
(5) http://quickdailyhits.wordpress.com/2009/04/27/obama-mahmoud-can-we-talk-ahmadinejad-only-if-i-set-the-preconditions/
(6) http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/09/iran-humanrights
(7) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/21/ahmadinejad-holocaust-den_n_293083.html