The speech made by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the American University in Cairo on January 10th deserves more attention than it has received from the US media. In it, Pompeo reveals his own peculiar vision of what is taking place in the Middle East, to include the impact of his own personal religiosity, and his belief that Washington’s proper role in the region is to act as “a force for good.” The extent to which the Secretary of State was speaking for himself was not completely clear, but the text of the presentation was posted on the State Department website without any qualification, so one has to assume that Pompeo was representing White House policy.
Pompeo immediately set the stage for what was to follow, asserting in his first several paragraphs that “This trip is especially meaningful for me as an evangelical Christian… In my office, I keep a Bible open on my desk to remind me of God and His Word, and The Truth. And it’s the truth, lower-case ‘t,’ that I’m here to talk about today. It is a truth that isn’t often spoken in this part of the world, but because I’m a military man by training, I’ll be very blunt and direct today: America is a force for good in the Middle East.”
Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence are quite likely the two most prominent Evangelical Christians in the Donald Trump Administration. Further, the two are Christian Zionists, which means that the return of the Jews to the Middle East is an essential precursor component of their belief that certain steps must be taken to bring about the second coming of Christ.
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US ground forces appear to be leaving Syria in spite of the efforts of those who are obsessed with the region and who seek to remain no matter the cost. Inexplicably, some who wish us to remain have responsibilities in the Trump Administration.
Our wars in the Middle East were lost the moment they began. These wars have proven costly in lives, wounded, populations displaced and destroyed, America’s alliances and standing in the world and trillions of dollars wasted. The greatest costs, however, have been incurred by allowing our obsession with the Middle East to permit Russia to expand its lead in military technology.
The War in Syria, like the rest of America’s 21st-century incursions into the Middle East, has been irretrievably lost. This reality, while dismissed in Washington, is recognized almost everywhere else.
Consider, for example, that in the past few days the Arab League has scheduled a vote — expected to easily pass — on reestablishing relations with Syria and reopening their Embassies in Damascus. The United Arab Emirates has already done so. Italy and Great Britain are renovating their Embassies in preparation for reopening. At the same time, the Iraqi Air Force is flying missions in support of the Syrian government. Recently, Syria has received, and is learning to operate, the very sophisticated Russian S-300 Anti-Aircraft System which works in concert with Syrian shorter range air defenses and Russian systems. Russian air defense and electronic warfare systems, along with Russian aircraft, operate from Russia’s two Syrian bases in support of Syrian military operations.
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Five Minutes Five Issues: National Emergency, Foreign Bases, Marijuana Noncrackdown, Oligarchs, Roving Patrols
A new episode of Five Minutes Five Issues is out. You can listen to it, and read a transcript, below. You can also find previous episodes of the show at Stitcher, iTunes, YouTube, and SoundCloud.
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Ron Paul: The Warmongering in DC is Bipartisan
Included in a Thursday foreign policy report by Rick Sanchez at RT, are portions of an interview with peace advocate and former United States House of Representatives Member Ron Paul (R-TX) in which Paul explains that a big barrier to moving toward nonintervention overseas is that “warmongering” has become a bipartisan fixation. “It used to be the Democrats were considered less likely to be involved in war, but they’re every bit as aggressive as the Republicans,” said Paul.
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Ron Paul to President Trump and Congress: Don’t Fence — or Wall — Us In
In 2011, when then-Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) was seeking the Republican presidential nomination, he spoke passionately from the debate stage against the US government having a fence at the US-Mexico border. “I think this fence business,” said Paul at a debate held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, “is designed, and may well be used, against us and keep us in.” “In economic turmoil, the people want to leave with their capital and there’s capital controls and there’s people control,” continued Paul, “so, every time you think of a fence keeping all those bad people out, think about those fences maybe being used against us.”
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Fed Up WikiLeaks Emails Media List of 140 ‘False and Defamatory’ Claims Not To Report as True
Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have not just been targeted by the United States government in response to their publishing of US government secrets. They have also been subjected to false reporting in the media.
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Taxing and Regulating the Hell out of Marijuana in California
A year into legal recreational marijuana sales in California, the volume of sales is far less than many people, and the state government, expected. The reason for low sales numbers is not that people stopped liking marijuana.
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