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America’s Foreign Policy in the Middle East is Not What Pompeo Claimed

Rogue Valley

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America’s Foreign Policy in the Middle East is Not What Pompeo Claimed

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1/10/19
The U.S. may have a foreign policy in the Middle East but it hardly resembles what Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described in Cairo on Thursday. In between bashing President Obama and American journalists to foreign audiences, Pompeo tried to make the case that the Trump administration has brought a tough new American engagement to the region. His main messages seemed to be that, despite Trump’s surprise troop withdrawal from Syria, America will stand fast with its security partners — and implicitly, that Trumpian foreign policy reflects a strategic through-line rather than the whims of an inexperienced and erratic celebrity. But he offered those in the face of far too much evidence to the contrary. From pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal to passivity in the face of the Saudi killing of a U.S.-based journalist, Trump has reduced American leadership and leverage in the region. One exchange seemed to sum up Pompeo’s situation. Before his Thursday speech at American University in Cairo, the BBC’s Barbara Plett Usher noted that President Trump’s had said ISIS was defeated and that he would quickly order U.S. troops home, and then other administration officials had said that neither was the case. “How is that not a contradiction?” she asked the secretary of state. Here is Pompeo’s answer: “There’s no contradiction whatsoever. This is a story made up by the media. That’s fine. You all write what you’d like. The president’s been very clear, and Ambassador [John] Bolton and I have been very clear about this too.”

But they have not been clear, and their words and frequent policy shifts and on-the-fly adjustments have been documented extensively. Pompeo couldn’t even finish his answer without contradicting himself. One breath later, he said that what he meant was the U.S. will pull out of Syria but continue to fight ISIS everywhere else. The Trump administration has an established track record: today’s foreign policy may not be yesterday’s or tomorrow’s. And no matter how hard Pompeo tried to portray chaos as stability, it simply is not true. Administration officials have too often been caught unawares or contradicted outright by their mercurial chief executive. For Syria, it’s happened twice in less than one year. Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis wasn’t one to sugarcoat Trump’s shifts. He would just say that he and the Defense Department were there to serve the unconventional decision-making of an unconventional president — until Mattis finally resigned in protest over one of those surprise policy outbursts. Three months ago, the policy was that the U.S. military would remain in Syria as long as Iran is there. That was then. This is now. “In Syria,” Pompeo said, “the United States will use diplomacy and work with our partners to expel every last Iranian boot, and work through the UN-led process to bring peace and stability to the long-suffering Syrian people.”

Simply put, there is scant coordination and cohesion between the White House and Foggy Bottom. Pompeo is in over his head as deeply as Trump.
 
America’s Foreign Policy in the Middle East is Not What Pompeo Claimed

defense-large.jpg




Simply put, there is scant coordination and cohesion between the White House and Foggy Bottom. Pompeo is in over his head as deeply as Trump.

USA policy has been following the PNAC line because many of those morons are still in Deep State positions including Pompeo, Mattis, and the Intelligence Agencies. They're going to lose power and are fighting back to the detriment of the Nation.
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USA policy has been following the PNAC line because many of those morons are still in Deep State positions including Pompeo, Mattis, and the Intelligence Agencies. They're going to lose power and are fighting back to the detriment of the Nation.
/

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USA policy has been following the PNAC line because many of those morons are still in Deep State positions including Pompeo, Mattis, and the Intelligence Agencies. They're going to lose power and are fighting back to the detriment of the Nation.
/

Have you actually READ the PNAC document?
 
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