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foreign affairs
I Am Muslim. I Am an Immigrant. I Am From Africa. Is Anyone Surprised I Am a GOP Target?
I will continue to speak for the families who are seeking justice around the world—Whether they are displaced in refugee camps looking to find a home somewhere, or whether they are hiding under their bed somewhere like I was, waiting for the bullets to stop.
Feb 02, 2023
The following are the remarks, as prepared for delivery on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) in opposition to a Republican resolution barring her appointment to the House Foreign Affairs Committee on February 2, 2023.
Who gets to be an American? What opinions do you have to have to be counted as American? That is what this debate is about, Mr./Madame Speaker. There is this idea that you are suspect if you are an immigrant. Or if you are from a certain part of the world, of a certain skin tone, or a Muslim.
It is no accident that Members of the Republican Party accused the first Black President, Barack Obama, of being a secret Muslim. It is no accident that former President Donald Trump led a birther movement that falsely claimed he was born in Kenya. Because to them, falsely labeling the first and only Black President of the United States a Muslim and an African immigrant somehow made him less American.
There is nothing objective about policymaking.
Well, I am a Muslim. I am an immigrant. And, interestingly, from Africa. Is anyone surprised that I am a target? Is anyone surprised I am somehow deemed unworthy to speak about American foreign policy? Or that they see me as a powerful voice that needs to be silenced? Frankly that is expected. Because when you push power pushes back.
Representation matters. Continuing to expand our ideas of who is American and who can partake in the American experiment is a good thing. I am an American. An American who was sent by her constituents to represent them in Congress. A refugee who survived the horrors of a civil war, As someone who spent her childhood in a refugee camp, and as someone who knows what it means to have a shot at a better life in the United States. Someone who believes in the American dream, in the American promise, and the ability to voice that in a democratic process.
That is what this debate is about. There is this idea out there that I do not have objective decision-making because of who I am or where I came from and my perspective. But we reject that and we say there is nothing objective about policymaking. We all inject our perspective, point of views, our lived experience, and the voices of our constituents. That is what democracy is about.
\u201cRepresentation matters.\n \nWe didn\u2019t come to Congress to be silent.\n \nWe came to Congress to be a voice for families who are displaced in refugee camps and those seeking justice around the world.\n \nBecause that\u2019s what this child survivor of war would have wanted.\u201d— Rep. Ilhan Omar (@Rep. Ilhan Omar) 1675357773
So what is the work of the Foreign Affairs Committee? It's not to cosign the stated foreign policy of whatever administration is in power. It's oversight, it’s to critique, and to advocate for a better path forward. But most importantly, it's to make the myth that American foreign policy is intrinsically moral a reality.
The work of the Foreign Affairs Committee... is to make the myth that American foreign policy is intrinsically moral a reality.
So I will continue to speak up because representation matters. I will continue to speak up for the sake of little kids who wonder who is speaking up for them. I will continue to speak for the families who are seeking justice around the world—Whether they are displaced in refugee camps looking to find a home somewhere, or whether they are hiding under their bed somewhere like I was, waiting for the bullets to stop.
Because that’s what this child survivor of war would have wanted. The 9-year-old me would be disappointed if I didn’t talk about the victims of conflict.
Those that are experiencing unjust wars, atrocities, ethnic cleansing, occupation—or displacement like I did—are looking to the international community, including the United States. Asking us for help. They look to us because the international community and the United States profess the value of protecting human rights and upholding international law. And we owe it to them not to make this a myth, but a reality.
I didn’t come to Congress to be silent. I came to Congress to be their voice. And my leadership and voice will not diminish if I am not on this committee for one term. Thank you and I yield back.
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Why Do Progressives Cling to Hillary?
Apr 29, 2016
As the primaries move into their final act, Sanders supporters confront a perplexing question: How could so many progressives vote for Hillary over Bernie?
After all, you would think that progressives would race toward the first self-declared socialist in American history who actually has a chance at becoming the nominee of a major political party and even of winning the Presidency. What does Hillary offer to progressives that Bernie can't provide in abundance?
1. Hillary's a proven winner?
This argument has two parts. First, Hillary progressives point out that she's beating Sanders in primary after primary, especially in diverse states. Therefore, she is clearly the stronger candidate now and in the fall. The second part is that Hillary progressives (especially older voters) believe that she would be a much stronger candidate against the Republican attack machine in the fall. She's already been through those wars and knows how to fight back.
The only problem with this argument is that the first part does not lead to the second part. There are multiple reasons for Hillary's victory in the primaries, ranging from the order of the contests to the initial strength of the Clinton machine, Hillary's strong base among African-American voters, and President Obama's tacit support.
None of this proves Hillary would be the stronger candidate in the fall, especially since she is far weaker than Bernie among independents. For example, the Michigan exit polls show that Bernie beat Hillary among independents 71% to 28%.
Hillary progressives cling to this winner meme even though poll after poll shows that Sanders is running better than all the Republican candidates. In the most recent poll from GWU/Battleground, Hillary is up only three points over Trump, while Bernie leads him by 10%.
According to the Real Clear Politics average of polls, Hillary's favorable/unfavorable ratings are -15.2%, while Bernie's are +5.2%. And the more Hillary campaigns, the worse her ratings have become.
So, how does this translate into more electability? It doesn't. It's as if Hillary progressives just can't believe that Americans are ready for a straight-talking social democrat who is willing to tackle runaway inequality and Wall Street directly.
2. Hillary knows how to get things done?
You would think Hillary progressives would be concerned about many of her past accomplishments. If Hillary wants to take credit for the Clinton presidency when it comes to job creation, she must also shoulder the responsibility for dismantling "welfare as we know it," the crime bill which helped make the U.S. the world leader in prisoners, and NAFTA which helped to gut good-paying industrial jobs.
Going forward, her proposals are smack in the middle of the neoliberal paradigm. She wants to use corporate tax incentives and "public-private partnerships" to urge businesses to invest in the U.S. and rebuild depressed areas. If she gets these things done, the biggest beneficiaries will be those corporations and local developers.
This corresponds precisely with the 2014 landmark study done by Professors Martin Gilens (Princeton) and Benjamin Page (Northwestern). They reviewed 1,779 congressional bills and found that the average citizen had "near zero" influence over policy. The only bills that passed where those that coincided with the wishes of the wealthy and corporate interests.
Because she has internalized these constraints, Hillary will not advocate for proposals that would redistribute wealth and power from Wall Street to Main Street. She opposes a financial speculation tax. She opposes breaking up the big banks. And she opposes free higher education (and instead she wants some kind of cap on student loans that would hardly dent the trillion dollar student loan industry.)
Under a Hillary administration, it is likely that more women and people of color will find their way into elite positions within the current political and economic hierarchy. However, her idea of "breaking all barriers" does not include breaking the biggest barrier of them all -- runaway inequality.
3. Hillary is realistic, Bernie is not?
Hillary Clinton supposedly sees the world the way it is, rather than the way Bernie wishes it were. As a result Hillary progressives believe that she has a much better command of the policy details and, therefore, how to move a progressive agenda. Meanwhile, Bernie, allegedly, is guaranteed to disappoint. Like Obama, he promises hope and change, but will be unable to deliver it.
This surprising Hillary-progressive critique misses the fundamental difference between the Clinton and Sanders political approaches. Bernie wants to mobilize the country into a "political revolution" for fundamental change. Hillary has no interest in such a movement. She sees herself as the change-maker-in-chief. It's all about her ability to produce pragmatic changes, not about our ability to force such changes into existence.
Sanders knows that an election of one person to high office is just the beginning. Unlike Obama he would not demobilize his backers after the election. Rather he would ask us to become extremely active -- from mass marches on the capital to engagement in state and local campaigns. As he points out repeatedly, real change only comes from below -- from a dedicated mass movement that is willing to take to the streets.
It's hard to figure out how progressives could miss this difference, or so readily dismiss it.
4. Hillary is more experienced in foreign affairs?
She certainly is, and virtually none of it is progressive. It is hard to distinguish her record from the neoconservatives. She supported the Iraq War (and please, no excuses about how she was misled.) She called for more troops to surge in Afghanistan than even the leading generals wanted. She engaged in nation-building in Libya and tacit regime change in Honduras. Plus she wants a no fly zone in Syria that most generals say would require tens of thousands of support troops.
Going forward, there is every reason to believe that there will be little daylight between her Middle East policies and those of the Netanyahu administration. She still thinks Libya can be a success story and that military surges could be highly effective. In short, Hillary Clinton is a hawk -- more hawkish than Obama, more hawkish than her husband, and far more interventionist than Sanders. (See "How Hillary Became a Hawk" NY Times Magazine 4/21/16)
The primaries provide a classic "hawk vs dove" choice, and Hillary progressives are going with the birds of prey.
5. Hillary breaks the glass ceiling?
There is no question that Hillary would make history by becoming the first female president, while Bernie would be the first with a Bar Mitzvah. A Hillary administration should be able to make progress on equal pay for equal work and on women's health issues, including the right to choose.
Interestingly, having the first female President seems to be extremely important to older women but much less so to younger ones. Perhaps a generation of struggle by the previous generation has paved the way for younger women to worry less about sexism. Or perhaps younger women have not as yet had to juggle work and family and discriminatory pay scales.
Whatever the reasons, young women are supporting Sanders by a remarkable 61% to 30%. They are saying that it would be good to have a progressive (man or women) to run the country. Hillary is not that progressive.
6. Hillary will do more for people of color?
Hillary certainly has achieved commanding victories among people of color. This is proof positive for some progressives that Hillary will do more to fight racial injustice and, therefore, should have our support.
But like so many pro-Hillary arguments, this one is also based on a faulty twist of logic. Getting most of the black and brown vote is no guarantee that her administration would do more for people of color than a Sanders administration.
The vote gathering among people of color has a great deal to do with the political apparatus that the Clintons have established over the past three decades. They have provided support to a great many black and brown political leaders. They have appointed them to office, campaigned for them and involved them in their own campaigns and charities. They have worked very hard for these votes, and Hillary is reaping the rewards. That can't be denied.
But what has been Hillary's impact on those who suffer the most from poverty and discrimination? That record is far murkier. Welfare reform causes real pain to low-income people, especially people of color. Getting tough on crime has been an unmitigated disaster for black and brown young men. Studies of the Clinton's public-private enterprise zone investments in inner cities show few gains from these efforts.
Going forward, Hillary rejects free higher education, a Sanders program that would disproportionately benefit young people of color and their families. It took Bernie to push her during the NY debate to embrace (sort of) a $15 an-hour federal minimum wage.
It's just damn hard to find a Hillary program that will rearrange the economy so that those at the bottom gain significantly more resources. She has no war on poverty, no public sector jobs program for inner city youth, no expansion of public education, and no crusade to integrate schools or housing.
The Clinton idea that "the era of big government is over" is a disaster for working people, especially women of color, who struggled their way into the middle class through public employment.
The Clinton machine far less convinces young people of color. Internal Sanders campaign polls show that among young black primary voters, Sanders is winning 51% to 43%, and among young Latino voters, he is winning 65% to 30%.
Facts don't matter?
Hillary progressives seem immune to most of these facts and figures. Regardless of what the polls say, they are sure that Hillary is the stronger candidate and that she can best trump Trump. They also seem certain that Bernie is too socialistic for this capitalist country, and therefore, he would get slaughtered, just like George McGovern, the anti-Vietnam liberal, in 1972.
But what if these polls do matter? What if Hillary really is the weaker candidate? What if Trump is able to successfully label her as the candidate of Wall Street?
We already hear the rumblings from the Hillary camp. They will blame Bernie and his ideological supporters for weakening her in the primaries. They will claim that he provided Trump with all the ammunition needed. And, they will blame young Bernie people for not voting in large enough numbers for Hillary.
But should this nightmare afflict us, Hillary progressives will have great difficulty explaining to others, and to themselves, why they did not back the most progressive and most electable candidate.
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'Duped': Tony Blair Supported Bush's Iraq War Long Before Vote or Invasion
Memo shows Blair 'was happy to launder George Bush’s policy on Iraq and sub-contract British foreign policy to another country'
Oct 19, 2015
One year before the United States-led coalition invaded Iraq, then-UK Prime Minister Tony Blair told the administration of President George W. Bush that he would support military action in that country, according to a memo publicized Sunday by the Daily Mail.
The revelation "flies in the face of the Prime Minister's public claims at the time that he was seeking a diplomatic solution to the crisis," the Mail points out. "He told voters: 'We're not proposing military action'--in direct contrast to what the secret email now reveals."
The document, written in March 2002 by former Secretary of State Colin Powell to Bush, was among a batch of secret emails held on the private server of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
"On Iraq, Blair will be with us should military operations be necessary," Powell wrote in a memo penned one week before Blair met Bush at the former president's ranch in Crawford, Texas.
"Aside from his foreign and defense secretaries, Blair's Cabinet shows signs of division, and the Labour Party and the British public are unconvinced that military action is warranted now," Powell continued, noting that Blair was likely to suggest ideas on how to "make a credible public case on current Iraqi threats to international peace" and "demonstrate that we have thought through 'the day after'."
In public comments during his time at Crawford, Blair denied that Britain was on an unstoppable path to war, saying: "This is a matter for considering all the options. We're not proposing military action at this point."
A year later, British Members of Parliament (MPs) gave Parliamentary approval for the invasion of Iraq.
According to the Mail, "A second explosive memo from the same cache also reveals how Bush used 'spies' in the Labour Party to help him to manipulate British public opinion in favor of the war."
The revelations outraged current and former MPs, at least one of whom said he felt "duped."
Former Labour MP Andrew MacKinlay, who sat on the foreign affairs select committee in the run-up to the war, told LBC Radio that he is "ashamed" to have trusted Blair about the Iraq War. "Looking at these documents this morning and everything else that has gone before, we know that this was a complete and utter deceit to me and to others," he said.
"Obviously I feel both deeply ashamed and very stupid having trusted a British prime minister, but it was a British prime minister," MacKinlay added. "One assumed that even allowing for exaggeration or inaccuracies in intelligence, I never thought it would be one hundred percent untrue, but it was--and myself and the British people, all of us, were duped."
Another unnamed senior diplomat, who according to the Mail had "close knowledge of Blair-Bush relations," said on Monday: "This memo shows beyond doubt for the first time Blair was committed to the Iraq War before he even set foot in Crawford."
Former Tory Shadow Home Secretary David Davis told the Mail that "[t]he memos prove in explicit terms what many of us have believed all along: Tony Blair effectively agreed to act as a frontman for American foreign policy in advance of any decision by the House of Commons or the British Cabinet."
Davis went on: "He was happy to launder George Bush's policy on Iraq and sub-contract British foreign policy to another country without having the remotest ability to have any real influence over it. And in return for what?"
"For George Bush pretending Blair was a player on the world stage to impress voters in the UK when the Americans didn't even believe it themselves," he concluded.
Meanwhile, a timetable for publication of an official inquiry into the UK's invasion of Iraq by Sir John Chilcot still has not been set. The Guardian reports that "there are already calls for further delays if he has not been given access to this secret memo between Powell and Bush setting out the U.S. view of Britain's position."
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