Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has made inflammatory remarks almost since the day she was elected — and long before she was elected, as the Black Hawk Down controversy illuminated (but more on that in a minute) — and she’s always had a chorus of voices on the left defending her every time she steps on her tongue.
However, with the recent revelation of a 2017 tweet when she still served in the Minnesota legislature where she not only egregiously misrepresented the facts surrounding the Battle of Mogadishu but also besmirched American soldiers who fought there, her allies fell silent.
Investigative Journalist John Rossomando, a reporter with the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) gave SaraACarter.com permission to reprint a report examining the silence of Omar’s allies regarding her 2017 tweet.
In response to a Twitter post calling the Mogadishu battle the “worst terrorist attack” in Somali history because 19 American soldiers were killed and 73 wounded, Omar falsely claimed that the United States killed thousands.
“In his selective memory, [the writer] forgets to also mention the thousands of Somalis killed by the American forces that day! #NotTodaySatan,” Omar wrote in 2017, while still a Minnesota state legislator.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and fellow Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Islamist activist Linda Sarsour have said nothing.
The Women’s March held a #WeMarchWithIhlan Twitterstorm on Tuesday in Omar’s defense, but it was arranged before the IPT exposed the “Black Hawk Down” tweet. Those who posted, including Sarsour and CAIR San Francisco Bay Area Executive Director Zahra Billoo, made no effort to defend that specific post.
Could the congresswoman finally have gone too far to defend? Was her misrepresentation of the facts the problem for her erstwhile supporters, or was it the sentiment that the U.S. was somehow slaughtering Somalis when, in fact, they were there defending UN Peacekeepers who were attempting to get food to those same Somalis?
Rossomando quotes several service members who were enlisted during the incident, and some who were involved. They think they know why Omar finally finds herself alone.
“The silence from Congresswoman Omar’s identity Left in the Democratic Party is deafening,” said Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. “Maybe it’s just because there is no way to publicly dismiss Americans and by association Muslims who love our military heroes.”
Jasser served as a Navy doctor on the U.S.S. El Paso at the time of “Black Hawk Down.”
“For them to face that will mean breaking their silence on her repulsive position on Operation Restore Hope,” he said, referring to a U.S. mission to open humanitarian aid routes to Somalis facing a humanitarian crisis. Local warlords had been intercepting the aid. The Battle of Mogadishu started when the U.S. tried to apprehend warlord Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid.
Indeed. Rep. Omar may finally be learning one of the first rules of politics the hard way: your alliances are only as strong as your ability to maintain a useful public image. Forcing people to defend you over and over again starts to be less useful and more like a cleanup project requiring a fixer.
Time will tell if there’s any way for the Minnesota congresswoman to convince her allies she’ll be of some use to them again.
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