Mike Pompeo Wants YOU To ... Look Over There!

He's never gonna be president.

  Mike Pompeo is what happens when you have the warmongering of Henry Kissinger with one-fourth the evil competence. But his heat-seeking to be the next Trump-wannabe in 2024 might be derailed by his monstrous incompetence.

As detailed by William Saletan of Slate , Pompeo has been trying to see if he can lie like a common Nikki Haley about how safe Afghanistan was when he was the one negotiating with the Taliban despite the disastrous consequences we are currently experiencing.

Appearing on Maria Bartiromo's Fox News show "Sunday Morning Futures," Mike Pompeo lied about it on Sunday for the second week in a row .

Pompeo played all his hits:

There were the dogwhistles:

POMPEO: [Biden] is more focused on spending three and half trillion dollars on creating 'diversity' inside of our military ...

He waxed about the marvelous deal he made:

POMPEO: Remember this Maria: From the time we began our "peace and reconciliation," our conversations ... from the time we signed that deal in February 2020 ... not a single American was attacked by the Taliban in a serious way and there wasn't a single American killed.

Yeah, well, once we told them we'd leave immediately if they just stopped attacking us (mostly), we guess they were OK with that.

Pompeo also attempted to say our allies don't trust us, as if to imply they'd like it better if Trump was still the sheriff. You bet.

POMPEO: You need [...] only to go to the British Parliament or listen to Macron or Merkel. [...] All of them are concerned that they no longer can trust America as a partner and ally.

Of course, one only has to look at news articles from Trump's four years to see how our allies actually felt while Trump was being pen-pals with Kim Jong-un or defending Vladimir Putin or defending Prince Bonesaw of Saudi Arabia. Pompeo's sudden concern for Emmanuel Macron or Angela Merkel or the British Parliament might not be authentic!

But as, MSNBC's Medhi Hansan tweeted, the receipts are all archived and wont be easily forgotten:

I know it's from my own show, and I know it's inspired by @saletan's excellent Slate piece and research, but this i… https: //t.co/4Qg9SDRDV4

— Mehdi Hasan (@Mehdi Hasan) 1630024680.0 

As Afghanistan falls further into chaos, the many decision by Pompeo that led here become starker. Slate detailed numerous articles, interviews, and statements showing Pompeo's hypocrisy like the video above. They also highlighted moments like one on March 5, 2020, when Pompeo responded to criticism by making excuses for the Taliban:

We have seen the senior Taliban leadership working diligently to reduce violence from previous levels [...]

Or when he told Fox News's Pete Hegseth on March 6, 2020 , he was willing let Kabul fall:

HEGSETH: I mean, we're not going to intervene ultimately two, three years from now if the Afghan Government can't defend itself. This is an Afghan issue.

POMPEO: That's right. [...]

When in the same “Fox & Friends" interview it was pointed out that the Taliban was not meeting its agreement, as similar violence to what's being seen now was already occurring then, Pompeo minimized it by calling it "common" in Afghanistan.

POMPEO: And your point about violence, violence is actually significantly down. The American people don't think – spend much time thinking about the fact that on an average day over the last years there have been between 80 and a hundred violent incidents across Afghanistan.This is common. This is recurring. It is a difficult place.

Pompeo's Dunning-Krueger inspired narcissism and disdain for anyone questioning his moves could be seen back when the House Foreign Affairs Committee was asking very relevant questions about this whole "negotiating with the Taliban as if they are part of the Afghan government thus undermining the actual government there."

I agreed w/ the Trump Admin that there was no military solution to Afghanistan. Unfortunately, my concerns with the… https: //t.co/rI5WRBrjYw

— Rep. Colin Allred (@Rep. Colin Allred) 1629560127.0 

Pompeo clearly stated then that they were "appraising" the Afghan government instead of including them as active participants. Watching Pompeo's smug arrogance in the face of legitimate concerns that were proven correct now is nauseating. It shows how little understanding Pompeo had as he opened the door of legitimacy for the Taliban as a co-equal part of Afghanistan's future.

It also reveals a simple truth of military occupations: The locals live there, the occupiers don't. They'll always be there after the occupiers are gone. It's why soon after our assistance and support was pulled, per the Pompeo-negotiated agreement, the Afghan military dissolved. Dying for a US-created government that no longer had US backing is like being a minimum wage mall cop dying to protect Mark Zuckerberg's barber .

As Slate concluded in their analysis :

The return of authoritarianism in Afghanistan is tragic. So are the latest atrocities: retributive executions, brutality against civilians, and the subjugation of women. The Biden administration misjudged how quickly the government would fall, and Biden misled Americans about what could happen. But nobody has lied more about the Afghan collapse than Pompeo. At every stage, he aided the Taliban and sabotaged the Kabul government. And now he dares to blame others.

The current whitewashing by Pompeo and others is actually very cynically straightforward. It's a bunch of self-interested scumbags trying to attain and hold on to power and relevance at the expense of real people's lives. So: Republicans.

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