President Barack Obama Wednesday charted a muscular new course for the United States in a turbulent world, telling the United Nations General Assembly in a bluntly worded speech that the American military would work with allies to dismantle the Islamic state's "network of death" and warning Russia that it would pay for it's bullying of Ukraine.
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"Today I ask the world to join in this effort," Obama said, seeking to buttress a global coalition that he said would train and equip troops to fight the group, also known as ISIL, starve it of financial resources and halt the flow of foreign recruit to it's rank.
"Those who have joined the ISIL should leave the battle field while they can" The President said, foreshadowing the blows to come.
"For we will not succumb to threat, and we will demonstrate that the future belongs to those who build, not those who destroy". The brutality of the militants he said, "forces us to look into the heart of darkness"
Even so, Obama said, the threat from the Islamic States was only the most urgent of an onslaught of global challenges that have given the United States no choice but to take the lead: from resisting Russia's aggression against Ukraine to coordinating a response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa; from brokering a new unity government in Afghanistan to organizing a new campaign to confront Climate Change.
Obama who spoke like a wartime leader, reaffirmed his determination to work with other countries but leaving little doubt that the United States would act as the ultimate guarantor of an international order that he said was under acute stress.
The president headed a rare leaders session of the United Nations Security Council, which unanimously passed a resolution requiring countries to pass laws against travelling abroad to join terrorist groups or financing those efforts.
"If there was ever a challenge in our interconnected world that cannot be met by one nation alone, it is this" he said. "terrorist crossing boarders and threatening to unleash unspeakable violence"
Appealing to the young Muslims and urging them to resist the blandishment of violent jihadism, Obama said......"You come from a great tradition that stands for education, not ignorance; innovation, not destruction; the dignity of life, not murder. Those who call you away from this path are betraying this tradition, not defending it"
British Prime Minister, Dave Cameron recalled parliament to meet Friday to vote on joining America-led airstrikes in Iraq.
Obama also met with Iraq's new Prime Minister, Haider al- Abadi. He praised Mr Abadi as the right person to heal Iraq sectarian rifts and said he "recognizes this is not something that is going to be easy, and it is not going to happen overnight"
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