Ayoon Wa Azan (The nation in the danger zone)

We’re done for. I’m talking not just about the reader or myself, but also about the whole nation. To be sure, President Barack Obama’s 50-minute speech at the 68th session of the UN General Assembly was dedicated to Arab issues and Iran. The French President Francois Hollande followed suit, giving us a worrisome amount of attention: He said bonjour to the audience, or something like that, and then started talking about Syria. The opening session on Tuesday was a memorable day. Indeed, I do not remember over the past twenty years that I heard in one day so many heads of states giving speeches, or heads of states that I wanted to hear speaking anyway. The President of Brazil Dilma Rousseff inaugurated the session by criticizing the U.S. spying on members of her government and Brazilian citizens, and then concluded by declaring her opposition to unilateral military intervention, by any one party. President Obama spoke next, followed by Turkish President Abdullah Gul, and then President Hollande (after a number of speakers from the third and fourth worlds). During the morning session, King Abdullah II of Jordan and the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad gave their speeches, while the afternoon session saw 16 heads of state or governments, including Iran's new President Hassan Rohani and Lebanese President Michel Suleiman, deliver their remarks. Thus, in one day, I embraced King Abdullah II and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose speech was scheduled for the next day, and shook hands with others. I said to King Abdullah that the meeting hall at my high school was more luxurious than the temporary hall of the General Assembly, pending the completion of repairs in the old hall. Then I told President Abbas: We are done for; they are going to destroy us. He smiled and said: We destroyed ourselves, and I replied: We half did, and they the rest. I also congratulated Sheikh Tamim for becoming the new Emir, and I told him that he expressed my opinion exactly in the part of his speech that said: “The issue is not the possession of chemical weapons, because Syria is in a conflict with another country that has chemical, biological, and even nuclear weapons. The issue is the regime’s use of the weapons, against its people.” I sat with Mrs. Wafaa Suleiman as her husband the President of Lebanon was delivering his speech. She promised to visit London, and the president was precise and clear in his words, as usual. But the clarity and firmness of some of the speeches of Arab leaders and their frankness did not eliminate my concerns as I heard Obama’s 50-minute speech focusing on our countries and Iran. The U.S. president’s hair turned grey after five years in the White House. This is probably Congress’s fault, and the results are what we see: Barack Obama is a well-intentioned brilliant orator, but while I give him an A grade for eloquence, I give him a C for his work, and F for his achievements. He attacked the Syrian regime sharply, and spoke about Mohamed Morsi’s victory in democratic elections, and criticized some of the decisions of the interim administration, before moving on to Iran. He explained what he accepts and what he does not, as though he was the ruler of the nation, and said that Iranian nuclear weapons threaten U.S. national security when it most certainly does not. He also said that his country was prepared to use all means in the Middle East, including military force, to protect ‘our interests.’ Which interests is he talking about? He means the interests of Israel, so that the Jewish state can remain the only power in the Middle East with WMDs. Then no sooner than the president had finished with Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Yemen that he began making demands on Iran, but which I see to be Israeli demands. I thank the Iranian President Hassan Rohani greatly for talking about peace, which he said his country wants, and yet he did not stoop or change his skin, and attacked Israel and its crimes scathingly so that the U.S. president may know exactly how Iran views Israel. I heard President Obama talk about what he wants and what he doesn’t want (I wasn’t that interested in what Hollande said), and thought that there are 193 UN member states and yet the U.S. President seems to be only interested in 22 Arab countries and Iran. They never showed interest in us for our own good, but for the good of Israel. While Obama might have tried, he has failed so far to deliver on any of his policies and promises, due to the pro-Israeli attitudes of some Congress members. So I hope Obama will be free from pressure in his last two years in the White House to act freely. He also said in his speech that democracy cannot be imposed by force, and this is true. Finally, the temporary headquarters of the General Assembly is not befitting for the world organization. I did not know how I entered or left after decades of attending the sessions. The whole world wants to listen to the U.S. president, if he is a fool like George W. Bush to know what kind of disaster it will face at his hands, or a clever leader like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, to learn the kind of solutions they might have to the world’s problems. So the best time for a speaker is before the U.S. president as people are assembled to listen to the latter, and the worst is after the U.S. president as people leave while the next speaker talks, who this year was the Turkish president. The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arab Today.