More thoughts

I also heard a clear call for the UN to decide if it was going to be a serious organization for the resolution of world problems, or if it was going to continue to be a group of irrelevant talking heads that do nothing and paralyze themselves into inaction by an unwillingness to condemn the evil in the world. Invoking the League of Nations (with the camera pointing at the French delegation…nice touch) was brilliant. Because today’s UN is about as ineffective and irrelevant as the League was. The only difference is that we’re members of the UN.
The bone he threw with regard to UNESCO notwithstanding, I think Bush threw the gauntlet down to the UN — either act like the organization we helped start, or we’re going to take our ball, go home, and start building our own coalition (if not act unilaterally from now on). And he did it in a way that any person with average intelligence ought to be able to recognize, even the French with their vaunted “simplisme”.
The UN is on notice — get on the stick, or you are irrelevant and will be ignored and bypassed.
It was a brilliant speech. It cut to the heart of the issue and used forceful language. And all I could think of was “thank God it’s not Clinton or Gore up there.” (Or Bush 41, for that matter. The son has definitely outpaced the father.)
My only complaint is that he can’t pronounce “nuclear” for shit. And he needs to decide if it’s eeRaq or eyeRaq or earRaq. But that just makes him more accesible to the common man, I suppose. (And at least he doesn’t say SADdam like his father did.) And if all I have to complain about is his dialect, I guess it was indeed a brilliant speech 🙂