In Cairo, Pompeo Rebuts Obama’s 2009 Speech: ‘The Age of Self-Inflicted American Shame is Over’

By Patrick Goodenough | January 11, 2019

Almost a decade after President Obama delivered a widely-hailed address “to the Muslim world” in Cairo, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo returned to the Egyptian capital Thursday to give a speech that amounted to a rebuttal of Obama’s – and a repudiation of the previous administration’s policies across the region.

Obama’s views on “violent extremism,” his engagement with the fundamentalist regime in Tehran, and his decision not to carry through with threats to punish the Assad regime for using outlawed chemical weapons all featured in Pompeo’s speech.

“Remember,” Pompeo told an audience of students, government officials and diplomats at the American University in Cairo, “it was here, here in this city, that another American stood before you.”  “He told you that radical Islamist terrorism does not stem from an ideology,” Pompeo continued. “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, quote, ‘a new beginning,’ end of quote.”  “The results of these misjudgments have been dire.,” Pompeo charged. “In falsely seeing ourselves as a force for what ails the Middle East, we were timid in asserting ourselves when the times – and our partners – demanded it.”...........“The good news is this,” he continued. “The age of self-inflicted American shame is over, and so are the policies that produced so much needless suffering. Now comes the real ‘new beginning.’”............To Read More......