The meme photo is courtesy of the article, “Trump's
army of sycophants: The ridiculous and ceaseless
flattery from his Cabinet speaks volumes”
Focused Read in 2-3 minutes
( 📎 Note: This article was published in 2017 pre- Pompeo's CIA nomination but, it matters...)
"This Evil Is All Around
Us
Trump’s pick for the
CIA, Mike Pompeo, sees foreign policy as a vehicle for holy war.
(By Michelle Goldberg)
In June 2015, Rep. Mike
Pompeo, a Kansas congressman, headlined a “God and Country Rally” at Wichita’s Summit Church.
“To worship our lord
and celebrate our nation at the same place is not only our right, it
is our duty,” he began.
Pompeo’s speech was a mishmash of
domestic culture war callouts and dark warnings about the danger of
radical Islam.
He cited an inflammatory prayer that a pastor named
the Rev. Joe Wright once delivered before the Kansas State
Legislature:
“America had worshipped other Gods and called it
multiculturalism. We’d endorsed perversion and called it an
alternative lifestyle.” He lamented government efforts to “rip
faith from our schools” and then segued immediately into a
discussion of the jihadi threat:
“This evil is all around us.”
Pompeo concluded by describing politics as “a never-ending struggle
… until the rapture.”
... If a normal Republican president had nominated a figure like this to
head the country’s major foreign intelligence agency,
there likely
would have been a lot of attention paid to his apocalyptic
religiosity and Manichaean worldview.
Amid the fire hose of lunacy
that is the Trump transition, however, Pompeo’s extremism has been
overlooked.
It’s worth pausing to appreciate the fact that
America’s CIA will shortly be run by a man who appears to view
American foreign policy as a vehicle for holy war.
Like Trump, Pompeo has
been a fierce critic of efforts to rein in the CIA’s
torture program and a champion of keeping Guantanamo Bay open.
While
in Congress, he was a frequent guest on the radio show of famously
paranoid Frank Gaffney,
a man disinvited from the
right-wing Conservative Political Action Conference after claiming
that the Muslim Brotherhood had infiltrated its parent organization,
the American Conservative Union.
(In the Trump era, Gaffney has been
brought in from the cold: After the election, the New York
Times reported that he was informally advising Trump’s inner
circle on national security hires.)
Gaffney once called Pompeo
“one of the most intelligent men I know in public life,” and the
two see the world similarly.
In February 2015, they spoke about
President Obama’s use of the term “violent extremism” instead
of “radical Islam,”
a linguistic choice that some on the right
see as a secret message of solidarity with jihad. Gaffney suggested
that Obama might be conveying “an affinity” for ISIS’s cause,
if not all its tactics:
“the raising up of the Muslim Ummah, a
grand rebalancing of America’s role in the world.”
Pompeo replied,
“Frank, every place you stare at the president’s policies and
statements, you see what you just described … every policy of this
administration has treated America as if we are the problem and not
the solution.”
Like Gaffney, Pompeo
believes that radical networks have wormed their way into every
corner of the country.
“There are organizations and networks here
in the United States tied to radical Islam in deep and fundamental
ways,” he said on Gaffney’s show.
“They’re not just in places
like Libya and Syria and Iraq, but in places like Coldwater, Kansas,
and small towns all throughout America.”
... In June 2013, he took to the
House floor to falsely accuse Muslim leaders of failing to
condemn terrorism in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing.
“When
the most devastating terrorist attacks on America in the last 20
years come overwhelmingly from people of a single faith, and are
performed in the name of that faith, a special obligation falls on
those that are the leaders of that faith,” he said. Then he added:
“The silence in the face of extremism coming from the best-funded
Islamic advocacy organizations and many mosques across America is
absolutely deafening. It casts doubt upon the commitment to peace by
adherents of the Muslim faith.”
In 2014, Pompeo appeared on
a Family Research Council podcast along with the group’s president,
Tony Perkins. Both were indignant at Obama’s claim that America
isn’t engaged in a clash of civilizations with the Muslim world.
“It is in fact a clash of civilizations!” said Perkins. “This
is exactly what we’re facing here, and if he is unwilling to
acknowledge that, how in the world do you protect Western
civilization?”
Pompeo responded: “In Western thought, there is
this idea that you can’t address an evil absent calling it by its
name ... "
You can read more here
Also...
Pompeo is pictured here, between and American flag
and a Christian flag, headlining the above referenced:
“God & Country Rally” at Wichita’s Summit Church.
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