{"id":3226,"date":"2023-02-03T16:36:45","date_gmt":"2023-02-03T20:36:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nymysteries.com\/?p=3226"},"modified":"2023-02-03T16:36:50","modified_gmt":"2023-02-03T20:36:50","slug":"new-york-mysteries-com-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nymysteries.com\/?p=3226","title":{"rendered":"New York Mysteries.Com"},"content":{"rendered":"
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LONG LIVE THE SQUAD !!!!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Representative Alexandra Ocasio Cortez Democrat New York, 14th District Bronx  just threw an utter temper tantrum on House floor after Ilhan Omar REMOVED from Foreign Affairs Committee. Ocasio-Cortez and Omar are two of the progressive Democratic group in the House known as the Squad<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I quote this from the Guardian:  Omar struck a defiant note in a speech shortly before the votes were counted, accusing Republicans of trying to silence her because she is a Muslim immigrant, and promising to continue speaking out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIs anyone surprised that I am being targeted? Is anyone surprised that 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, it is expected because when you push power, power pushes back,\u201d Omar said, adding: \u201cMy leadership and voice will not be diminished.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Ilhan Omar Asks Questions, Her Colleagues Should Listen<\/strong><\/a>
Peter Beinart  January 30, 2023 New York Times <\/a>
She doesn\u2019t oppose an active U.S. foreign policy. She opposes the myth \u2014 which frames so much official discourse in Washington \u2014 that American foreign policy is intrinsically moral.<\/em><\/td><\/tr>

Ilhan Omar, Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.O)<\/td><\/tr>
House Republicans are poised make a grave mistake by removing from the Committee on Foreign Affairs the only person who consistently describes American foreign policy as it is experienced by much of the rest of the world. Those behind the effort to remove Ilhan Omar claim that she\u2019s bigoted against Jews. Her Democratic defenders counter that the real bigots are those Republicans seeking to oust a Black Muslim woman. Yet neither side is talking much about what Ms. Omar has actually done on the committee from which she may soon be removed. That\u2019s too bad. Because what Ms. Omar has done is extraordinary. In 2021, the Alliance of Democracies Foundation asked<\/a> 50,000 people in 53 countries which global power they thought most threatened democracy in their nation. The United States came in first. Judging by their public statements, most members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee think these non-Americans are certifiably insane. The committee\u2019s Republicans and Democrats both largely take it for granted that the United States \u2014 despite occasional blunders \u2014 defends liberty. When discussing threats to human rights, they generally attribute them to America\u2019s foes. Ms. Omar is the exception. Consider what transpired at a hearing last April<\/a> about American strategy in Asia. Michael McCaul, a Republican who is now the committee\u2019s chairman, declared that \u201cAmericans\u2019 legacy in the Indo-Pacific is freedom and prosperity\u201d \u2014 and then warned that China\u2019s Communist Party threatens it. Ted Deutch a Democrat, told the witness, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, that it was a \u201cpremise that I think we all share\u201d that \u201chuman rights needs to be front and center in our foreign policy.\u201d Having applauded the Biden administration and his fellow committee members for their devotion to human rights, Mr. Deutch asked about China\u2019s repression in Xinjiang and its arms sales in the Middle East. When Ms. Omar\u2019s turn came, the self-congratulation abruptly stopped. She began by noting that during America\u2019s last Cold War, the country supported \u201cbrutal dictators\u201d like Chile\u2019s Augusto Pinochet and Indonesia\u2019s Suharto because they shared \u201ca common enemy.\u201d She then asked Ms. Sherman why her administration was making Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India \u201cour new Pinochet.\u201d Ms. Omar\u2019s colleagues discussed India primarily as a potential bulwark against China and Russia. Only Ms. Omar spoke about American complicity in the repression of minority groups in India. \u201cHow much does the Modi administration have to criminalize the act of being Muslim in India,\u201d she asked, \u201cfor us to say something?\u201d This pattern has repeated itself again and again in the four years since Ms. Omar entered Congress. The 50 other members of the Foreign Affairs Committee piously condemn the misdeeds of America\u2019s foes. She asks uncomfortable questions about America\u2019s own. In a hearing in May 2021, about Chinese atrocities against Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang, only Ms. Omar noted that the United States had itself imprisoned 22 Uyghurs at Guant\u00e1namo Bay and that China\u2019s president had reportedly cited<\/a> America\u2019s \u201cwar on terror\u201d as a justification for his own crackdown. A witness who leads the Uyghur Human Rights Project concurred that America\u2019s actions had \u201cpaved the way for this comfortable labeling Uyghurs as a terrorist\u201d group by Beijing. In a 2020 subcommittee hearing<\/a> on \u201cDemocratic Backsliding in sub-Saharan Africa,\u201d Republican Representative Tim Burchett expressed outrage that \u201csome of the officers who took part in the Mali coup d\u2019\u00e9tat had recently returned from Russia.\u201d Only Ms. Omar noted that according to The Washington Post<\/a>, the coup\u2019s leader, Col. Assimi Goita, had for years fought alongside U.S. Special Forces. Under her questioning, a witness from the U.S.-government-funded National Democratic Institute admitted that the \u201cgross violations of human rights\u201d he denounced in Cameroon were partly committed by troops armed by the United States. Last February, in a committee hearing on Latin America, Ms. Omar asked<\/a> Todd Robinson, assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, about an inspectors general investigation that found that his agency had covered up its involvement in a 2012 massacre of four Indigenous Hondurans. Despite working at the agency in 2012, Mr. Robinson said he didn\u2019t recall what he had told investigators. He didn\u2019t know if any of the Americans and Hondurans charged in the massacre had been convicted. He didn\u2019t know if any of the victims had received compensation. Why was Mr. Robinson so unprepared for Ms. Omar\u2019s line of inquiry? Perhaps because committee members rarely ask government officials such pointed questions about violations of human rights committed by the United States and its friends. Ms. Omar\u2019s detractors might say all this reflects her anti-Americanism. They\u2019re wrong. Ms. Omar speaks idealistically<\/a> about \u201cthe moral authority the United States carries on the world stage when we stand up for human rights.\u201d She just recognizes \u2014 as do many across the globe \u2014 that the United States doesn\u2019t exercise that moral authority nearly as often as our leaders claim. She doesn\u2019t oppose an active U.S. foreign policy. She opposes the myth \u2014 which frames so much official discourse in Washington \u2014 that American foreign policy is intrinsically moral. \u201cWe are human beings like other human beings on this planet,\u201d she wrote in 2021<\/a>, \u201cwith the same flaws and the same ambitions and the same fragilities.\u201d Across the world, many people encounter American foreign policy when they see a drone flying overhead, a hospital that U.S. sanctions have deprived of medicine or a dictator\u2019s troops carrying American-made guns. Ms. Omar asks the kinds of questions that these non-Americans \u2014 whether they reside in Pakistan, Cuba or Cameroon \u2014 might ask were they seated across from the officials who direct America\u2019s awesome power. She translates between Washington and the outside world. More often than not, she does so alone. Peter Beinart (<\/em>@PeterBeinart<\/em><\/a>) is a professor of journalism and political science at the Newmark School of Journalism at the City University of New York. He is also editor at large of Jewish Currents and writes The Beinart Notebook, a weekly newsletter.<\/em> F<\/em><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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