Only Dilma Rousseff wants to chat with terror

Under a tradition dating from 1947, the Brazilian president always makes the first speech at the annual opening of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Inevitably, once in the UN spotlight, the presidents have been unable to totally resist the temptation to boast about themselves and their achievements and have all let a small amount of self-praise slip in. However, never in history has this UN pulpit been as flagrantly used for personal propaganda as by Lula and Dilma Rousseff. In his debut as president in 2003, Lula said his government´s anti-hunger program was so good that the rest of the world should copy it. He called on the UN to create a World Committee Against Hunger. The idea was so redundant, demagogic and impractical that it was forgotten even before Lula ended his speech.

When she opened the 69^th General Assembly last week, Rousseff had her moment of instant irrelevance. Like someone who stumbles into reality, falls and picks herself up as if nothing has happened, Rousseff preached the old threadbare formula of using dialogue to deal with conflicts. However, the biggest problem now is that Isis, the cruelest and most barbarous terrorist group in modern history, does not believe in dialogue. In fact, it cuts off the tongues of its enemies. That is why her recipe for world peace was instantly ignored. Hours later, the UN Security Council passed a resolution compelling member states to ban their citizens from adopting any attitude that might look like supporting terrorist groups. Barack Obama, the most peaceful of American presidents, summed up the gravity of the situation brought about by the Isis terrorists: “The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force.” The UN and Obama left Rousseff talking to herself.

The world has changed, as has the UN. Being anti-American was once enough to gain the right to commit atrocities. In 1964, the Argentinean Che Guevara felt safe enough to openly confirm suspicions that adversaries of the Communist regime in Cuba were murdered: “Yes, we shoot them. We have shot them. We are shooting and will continue to shoot them for as long as necessary. Our fight is a fight to the death”. He said nothing very different from what Isis is practicing in the Middle East today.

President Rousseff joined the anti-American chorus at the UN last week although she did not actually name the United States. On Tuesday, September 23, a day before her speech at the opening of the General Assembly, she answered a journalist´s question on the US-led attacks in Syria that had begun the previous night by saying it would be better to appeal to dialogue than through a military operation. The question then was whether she was defending the idea that the Syrian president, Bashar Assad — who was not the target of the American attacks — should be heard. In her speech read to the plenary session on Wednesday, she repeated the argument that the use of force would not be enough to eliminate the deep-rooted causes of the conflicts and quoted the examples of Palestine, Syria, Iraq and Libya. It then became obvious at a new press conference that her comment had actually been directed at the American bombing of the Islamic State, a terrorist army that controls part of the territories of Iraq and Syria. Asked whether it was possible to negotiate with Isis, she made it clear, despite the confused language she always uses, that the answer was yes. “People want to simply bomb Isis and say things will be resolved because dialogue does not work. I don´t think just bombing will work either,” she said. Fortunately, her comments were ignored by the international news media.

Over 60 countries have already stated their support for the bombings against the Isis training camps, arms warehouses, refineries and command centers in Syria. Even Turkey, which had previously been hesitant as it finances a number of Syrian groups opposed to Assad, gave in. To date, five Arab nations have joined the US in the military operation. “These countries are very reluctant to bomb an Arab neighbor´s territory. It was certainly a difficult decision and required a lot of dialogue between them and the Americans,” said political scientist Paulo Wrobel, professor of international relations at the PUC-Rio university.

All of them, except Brazil, understood very well the urgent need to counter the Isis threat. The group has thousands of foreign fighters who may later return to their countries of origin and carry out attacks. While Rousseff was making her general defense of peace at the UN, a terrorist group in Algeria posted a video in which it decapitated Hervé Gourdel, a French tourist guide who had been kidnapped. No dialogue could have saved Gourdel as the terrorists were following an order from Isis to kill any French citizen anywhere in the world. It was also revealed last week that an obscure group called the Khorasan, formed by veterans of the Al Qaeda terrorist network and also based in Syria, was planning an attack in the US. They were the first to be bombed by American fighter planes and drones. Neither Russia nor China, which have serious geopolitical differences with the United States, defends conversations with terrorists. Despite Rousseff´s “peace and love” speech, the UN Security Council met hours later and unanimously approved a resolution urging all countries to  strengthen their laws to make it a criminal offense for citizens to travel to terrorist breeding grounds, particularly Syria. The Security Council has 15 member states, of which five are permanent members with a veto right and 10 are temporary members. Rousseff called at the UN for the number of permanent members to be expanded and for Brazil to be included in order to find solutions for world conflicts. One can only wonder whether she would have voted against the anti-terror resolution if Brazil had been occupying one of the permanent seats.

“Nobody is against peace. Even the Islamic State says it is in favor, on its own terms. The problem is how to get there,” said political scientist Leonardo Paz, coordinator of the Brazilian Center of International Relations (local acronym Cebri). However, the problem of Rousseff´s diplomacy is worse for Brazil. The foreign ministry, known as the Itamaraty, is always the first to question any American military action, even against terror. However, it is quick to justify acts of state terrorism by countries it regards as allies, such as Vladimir Putin´s Russia. When Russian missiles murdered 298 defenseless civilians on board a Boeing 777 plane of Malaysia Airlines in the skies over Ukraine, Rousseff and the Itamaraty pretended it was none of their business. The entire civilized world condemned Moscow´s terrorist attack but Rousseff, the pacifist, lover of dialogue and enemy of the use of force, did not say a word.