© REUTERS/Carlos Barria
U.S. President Donald Trump delivers his acceptance speech as the 2020 Republican presidential nominee during the final event of the Republican National Convention on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, U.S., August 27, 2020.
Mike Pompeo's address to the RNC while chasing weapons sales illustrates just how President Trump is keeping the neocons in his administration happy by enabling the business of war across the world.
"I'm speaking to you from beautiful Jerusalem, looking out over the old city,"
said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, America's top diplomat and de facto government public relations chief, as he addressed the Republican National Convention from a foreign country.
Imagine if the scene had been slightly different, and Pompeo had beamed into the Republicans' big election campaign showcase from Red Square: "Hi, I'm Mike Pompeo, your Secretary of State, looking out over the Kremlin."
One of these scenarios is not like the other in terms of how it's received by the US political establishment. Pompeo's Washington critics were far more interested in trying to pin a technical foul on him for mixing official government business with partisan political cheerleading than questioning his actual choice of location.
From Israel, Pompeo railed about the multilateral nuclear deal with Iran signed under President Barack Obama, from which Trump withdrew the US. He said that Trump "squeezed the Ayatollah, Hezbollah and Hamas," whatever that means.
"In the Middle East, when Iran threatened, the president approved a strike that killed the Iranian terrorist Qasem Soleimani," Pompeo said, ignoring the fact that the top Iranian general was an ally of the US against Al-Qaeda in the wake of the terrorist attacks on US soil on September 11, 2001, and played a critical role in the defeat of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS).
Israel may have wanted him dead, but the US didn't have to oblige.
Comment: See also: