As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo looks to his political future, his turbulent tenure is characterized by investigations into his leadership and ethics.
WASHINGTON — Spurned by many foreign allies, ridiculed by adversaries, disliked by a significant number of his own diplomatsand trying to preserve his political future, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week offered an insight into his legacy as a commander of the Trump administration’s scorched-earth foreign policy by citing a seminal moment in his personal history.
In 1983, when Mr. Pompeo was a cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point, an Iranian-linked militia bombed the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 American troops. By his own telling — “My life wouldn’t be the same after that,” Mr. Pompeo said on Tuesday, in his last public speech in office — it was a powerful indoctrination for a young soldier in training to protect the United States from deadly enemies.
Thirty-five years later, after becoming the 70th secretary of state in 2018, Mr. Pompeo embraced the same military mentality to confront the world. Foreign policies were described as “mission sets,” and his wife, Susan, was a “force multiplier” in disarming dignitaries and families of State Department employees. Continue reading.