What’s Missing From Obama's UN General Assembly 'Swan Song'?

Several blocks around the UN headquarters in New York were surrounded by police and armed special agents as world leaders gathered for the 71st General Assembly meeting. Just a few days ago bomb blasts in New York's Chelsea district and in the Seaside Park neighborhood in New Jersey caused havoc in the region. On Monday police arrested the suspected bomber, a 28-year-old man of Afghan descent named Ahmad Khan Rahami. Now 15 years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and eight years after the Democratic Senator from Illinois Barack Obama became President, tensions in the Big Apple, and in the US in general, are high.

Traffic jams caused by VIP arrivals and increased security measures were so dire that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was forced to leave his car and walk the remainder of the way to the UN building, following morning talks with US counterpart Secretary of State John Kerry.

​President Obama is one of the few people who was not forced to submit to multiple security screenings on the way to the UN, and there is no such thing as traffic for his motorcade, but he was nonetheless 30 minutes late for his address.

With all the issues facing the world today, the US president, in his final address, stuck to what the Obama Administration considers to be its key achievements, among them the Iran Nuclear deal and the Paris climate agreement.

​Other key talking points were dedicated to the global economy, the striking gap between the rich and the poor, and ways in which nations, according to Obama, must deal with these issues.

In his remarks, the US President mentioned that wealthy nations could and should do more to help solving the refugee crisis. According to recent UNHCR figures, 5.3 million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes in the past year, and that there are currently some 21.3 million refugees in the world. On Monday, world leaders adopted the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, to protect the rights of the displaced.

Obama did not mention the 2011 NATO-led intervention in Libya, and the failed US Iraq policy, which, according to many, contributed significantly to the refugee crisis.

While talking about the 2014 coup d'etat in Kiev, the US President claimed that Ukraine's leaders were corrupt, and that citizens in the country engaged in a democratic revolution. There was no mention of the ultranationalist takeover that followed the citizen revolt, with fascist organizations, including Right Sector, gaining power and committing crimes against the Russian-speaking population in eastern areas of the country.

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Obama also spoke about fighting the Ebola disease and the Zika virus, stating that "mosquitos don't respect walls," and underlining that there is a global need to invest in an Ebola cure.

Outgoing two-term US President Barack Obama ended his final UN General Assembly address describing ways in which "all of us can be co-workers with God."

After eight years in office, Obama's sentiment of being God's Co-Workers is a long way away from his original Change We Can Believe In.