After President Trump sparked intense controversy by announcing the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went on the road to reassure the Middle East that America did not mean what the president said.

After historic victories against ISIS, it’s time to bring our great young people home! pic.twitter.com/xoNjFzQFTp — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 19, 2018



That was the context of Pompeo’s sometimes bizarre and often contradictory remarks in Cairo on Thursday. His message could be paraphrased as promising more U.S. engagement in the region, holding U.S. intervention as "as a force for good" and taking every opportunity to claim that President Barack Obama had been wrong in his handling of regional problems.

That did more to muddy the waters on where Washington stands than to clear them up.

On Syria, Pompeo seemed to offer two separate policies: "President Trump has made the decision to bring our troops home from Syria." He added, “We always do, and now is the time. But this isn’t a change of mission. We remain committed to the complete dismantling of the ISIS threat and the ongoing fight against radical Islamism in all its forms.” That point was reiterated even more forcefully when he said, "When America retreats, chaos follows.”

Speaking on U.S. support for allies, he offered similarly contradictory remarks: "And at this critical moment, America, your longtime friend, was absent too much," he said. Then later: "But as President Trump has said, we’re looking to our partners to do more, and in this effort we will do so going forward together." He also said, "We ask every peace-loving nation of the Middle East to shoulder new responsibilities for defeating Islamist extremism wherever we find it."

Pompeo seemed to commit to more failed state-building projects and even argued in support regime change and and increased American presence at a time when public support seems to be behind winding down our forces. More importantly, he spoke in apparent contradiction of Trump's pledge to end U.S. engagement in forever wars.

As a consolation for those worried about the dangers of American adventurism and its consequences of instability in the past, Pompeo's answer was unconvincing: "For those who fret about the use of American power, remember this: America has always been, and always will be, a liberating force, not an occupying power." That reaffirmed his earlier remark that "it is a truth that isn’t often spoken in this part of the world, but I’m a military man by training, so I’ll put it bluntly: America is a force for good in the Middle East. Period.”

Pompeo's promises to do "good" and promote America's interests would seemingly point to the old foreign policy that Trump considers a failure. One could point to the decision in 1953 to topple Iran's democracy, replacing it with a corrupt and unpopular, but U.S.-friendly, shah. This eventually led to the fundamentalist revolution and the modern Iranian state. Not that we've learned much from that — at one point in his speech, Pompeo suggested that we should have supported Iranian regime change in 2009: "America’s reluctance, our reluctance, to wield our influence kept us silent as the people of Iran rose up against the mullahs in Tehran in the Green Revolution," he said.

One could just as easily point to the Iraq War, which destabilized the region, empowered Iran, and led to countless local and regional acts of genocide, before a hasty U.S. withdrawal helped cause the rise of the Islamic State.

If the U.S. hopes to make progress and win trust on its goals in the Middle East, whatever they may be, acknowledging those flaws and the danger of ill-advised bold actions is critical. Pompeo's speech did the opposite, creating confusion about where Washington stands and pointing to a continued short-sighted foreign policy of unintended consequences and unwinnable wars.