Yooo! What Was That All About?🤨
Conclusion on the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s Affront
What would your proud family think of you if you were to go over to the next door neighbor’s house and talk recklessly about a certain prominent member of your stock? What would possess you to do such an irreverent and inglorious act? What kind of motives or what sort of ill-will would prompt you to discredit them in such an open and disparaging way? Think about that for a minute. Who does that?
Evidently, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did just that in Cairo on Thursday. He made his speech to an audience of Egyptian officials, foreign diplomats and students at American University, where he mentioned this.
Remember, it was here, here in this city, that another American stood before you. He told you that radical Islamist terrorism does not stem from ideology. He told you that 9/11 led my country to abandon its ideals, particularly in the Middle East. He told you that the United States and the Muslim world needed “a new beginning.” The results of these misjudgments have been dire. In falsely seeing ourselves as a force for what ails the Middle East, we were timid about asserting ourselves when the times — and our partners — demanded it.
That other American that stood before them previously was President Barack Obama who delivered a speech on June 4, 2009. In it Mr. Obama did not make such crass statements. In fact, Obama made candid statements regarding the tensions at that time that culminated into 9/11 having risen to a discordant crescendo in the relationship between Islam and the West. Obama wanted to redefine a relationship that has always been defined by differences and begin anew “based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”
This assertion that Mr. Pompeo, and his boss would like to accomplish instead is the antithesis of that. What the Trump administration would like to propound and impose is a return to what led to those irascible tensions of distrust and intolerance. A return to something unnecessary that Mr. Obama made clear in his speech that day by his appeals to establishing a unified front against ISIS and a more humanitarian sensibility that would surely defeat the incorrigiblity of extremism and colonialism.
We meet at a time of tension between the United States and Muslims around the world — tension rooted in historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate. The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of co-existence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars. More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.
Violent extremists have exploited these tensions in a small but potent minority of Muslims. The attacks of September 11th, 2001 and the continued efforts of these extremists to engage in violence against civilians has led some in my country to view Islam as inevitably hostile not only to America and Western countries, but also to human rights. This has bred more fear and mistrust. — President Barack Obama, June 4, 2009, Cairo, Egypt.
Apparently, however the Secretary of State is also not fond of reading as there is no mention of the word ideology in that speech. Mr. Pompeo is also not fond of Mr. Obama neither. Based on interviews where Pompeo, a House Representative for Kansas at the time, has sat with nationalists or right wing coalition groups to express hostilities about Islam, making pointed statements like these as reported in theAtlantic.
[…]a questioner — after accusing Obama of supporting Islamists in Egypt and Iran — told Pompeo, “I can’t think of anything where he’s been on our side.” Pompeo’s answer: “The data you point out is correct and I’m not afraid to talk about the data. The data is very clear. Every time there has been a conflict between the Christian West and the Islamic East the data points all point to a single direction” — to Obama’s disloyalty to Christianity and the United States.
I want to emphasize the incoherence in the Secretary’s admission here that “the age of self-inflicted American shame is over, and so are the policies that produced so much needless suffering.” There is no shame in coming to terms with the truth and in reconciling those truths with “mutual interest and mutual respect. There is however the shamelessness with incompetently recognizing this.
The only suffering that is in fact needless is having to endure the resentful sentiment of Barack Obama’s two-term presidency. It wasn’t perfect but it surely warrants better cerebral analysis than this administration’s puerile attempts at denigrating a former president’s commitment in wanting to reset and establish a plausibly peaceful path towards Middle East foreign policy.
The lameness of this ‘America First’ or ‘Make America Great Again’ portrayal and reprisal as suffering can only be applied to what makes the disunited states of America so appallingly embarrassing to sit through and witness.
Apparently this delusional aspect of whiteness is made possible by conjuring up the false memories, false narratives and sincere fictions of American shame as a lost cause. As long as the shepherds of the patriarchy and their ewes continue with their insufferable lies and ignorance towards the beneficence of multicultural Americanism then they will continue to be led astray by this Trump administration.
What Pompeo’s speech is in fact all about is the mindless ahistorical ignorance of colonialism and its contributing role to this day to inequality and extremism. No one wants to discuss it much less admit that it has been a singular derogatory component to American exceptionalism. What this sounds like is the instigation of an unnecessary old and tired war or unilateral strike in the works with no real precondition to do so set and that a premature troop withdrawal would likely set in motion. This would be seen as a last ditch effort to reassert a failed and unpopular presidency.
Mr Secretary, the next time you decide to go badmouth that other American in another country because of some incessant rivalry or pent up resentment you hold against your own countrymen — a presidential statesman, be forewarned that you look stupid exposing this intergroup racial rivalry in front of the world of diverse humanity. Know that you not only contradict the history and standing of a multicultural nation but that you dishonor the bonds that embody the soul of a democracy.
