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Andrea Mitchell: U.N. Speech Shows a 'Very Different Legacy' for Obama

President Barack Obama’s speech to the U.N. shows he will leave a vastly different legacy than he thought even a year ago, Mitchell says.
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President Barack Obama’s speech to the United Nations shows he will leave a vastly different legacy than he thought when he addressed the U.N. even one year ago, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell says. A year ago, Obama told the General Assembly that the United States had “worked to end a decade of war,” and was out of Iraq and getting out of Afghanistan. On Wednesday, Obama threatened ISIS killers who he said only understand “the language of force.”

“Just a year ago, he was saying the wars are over, we’re bringing our troops home,” Mitchell, chief foreign affairs correspondent for NBC News, said on MSNBC. “That’s not the case. This is a very different legacy than he thought he would be leaving.”

She said that Obama also implicitly criticized some of the very countries he is counting on to fight ISIS. When Obama described a coalition of 40 countries, “That’s not 40 countries stepping up to the plate,” Mitchell said. “They’re just saying we’re against terrorism. That is a very easy thing to say.”

“But five countries, five Arab countries, have agreed, and four out of the five were in the air on that first night of airstrikes,” she said. “Yet at the same time, Qatar and some of the others are still funding what we could consider hate thought and hate speech and hateful terrorist activities.”

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