I have, at times, been a little annoyed at some of the unforced errors by some have progressive members of congress like Ilhan Omar and the squad. They are lighting rods and that’s not necessarily a bad thing but I have thought at times that they could have picked their battles better.
But this latest brouhaha about Ilhan Omar is bullshit. She did not say anything antisemitic and her point, if you care at all about facts and truth, is right on. Elizabeth Bruenig breaks it down in the Atlantic:
What did Omar say? Context is key. In 2020, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on International Criminal Court prosecutors who moved to investigate potential U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan as well as potential Israeli crimes in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, arguing that because the U.S. and Israel aren’t members of the ICC, the court has no right to adjudicate such matters. (The ICC recognizes the State of Palestine as a party to its governing statute, a decision that the U.S. insists the ICC lacks the power to make.) Omar vocally opposed the sanctions—as did the European Union, the president of the ICC’s Assembly of States Parties, Senator Patrick Leahy, and, presumably, anyone skeptical of America’s willingness to look into its own savagery abroad.
During a June 7 budget hearing, Omar asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken a series of questions based on the ICC incident. First, Omar praised Blinken for lifting the Trump-era sanctions. Then she pointed out that he nevertheless still opposed an ICC investigation into war crimes in Afghanistan and Palestine—including, in the first case, offenses allegedly perpetrated by the U.S., the Afghan national government, and the Taliban; and, in the second, Israeli security forces and Hamas. Omar asked, “Where do we think victims are supposed to go for justice? And what justice mechanisms do you support?”
To which Blinken replied, more or less, that the U.S. and Israel are competent to adjudicate all of the above. This raised the obvious question Then why haven’t they?, but Omar’s time was up, and she politely yielded to the next representative.
Later that day, Omar’s official Twitter account shared a video and tweeted a paraphrase of the exchange. The tweet read, in its entirety: “We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity. We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban. I asked @SecBlinken where people are supposed to go for justice.”
Omar’s critics then alleged that, by mentioning the U.S., Israel, Hamas, Afghanistan, and the Taliban in a list of parties worthy of investigation for wartime atrocities, she had implied a moral equivalence, or an intolerable similarity between the two good actors (you don’t need me to point them out) and the bad ones.
Distance yourself from king and country, blood and soil; remember that Twitter forces concision, and ask yourself: Has the U.S. committed atrocities in Afghanistan? During his presidency, Donald Trump used his clemency powers to pardon soldiers and mercenaries who had murdered Afghan civilians, which strongly suggests that American soldiers and mercenaries had in fact killed civilians in Afghanistan. An Intercept investigation last year found that CIA-funded death squads have organized lethal raids resulting in the murder of children. And about the torture that the ICC alleges U.S. forces carried out in the aftermath of 9/11—who was it, again, who outright admitted that in those days, “we tortured some folks”?
The U.S. had its reasons. Everybody always does. Omar wasn’t supplying a list of all the bad actors in the world, or ranking the worst of them. She was arguing that the parties listed have something in common: They’ve all committed acts of violence during conflicts that exceed or violate international standards of just war. The crimes of the U.S. aren’t of the same magnitude as those of the Taliban. But what does that matter to the victims of American forces—or the victims of Israeli forces, or those of Hamas, or of Afghan national forces, or of the Taliban? It was on behalf of those people—the victims of wartime atrocities—that Omar posed her questions, and the only equivalence stipulated was theirs: an equality of pain, a likeness of suffering.
It is indisputable that the US has committed atrocities. Just going back to Vietnam there has been My Lai through Abu Ghraib, torture, Blackwater and beyond. Trump actually pardoned a bunch of war criminals! It’s literally insane to pretend that didn’t happen.
Nobody, including Omar, says that either country is exactly like the Taliban or Hamas. But war crimes are war crimes and the whole point of having an international war crimes regime is to treat the crimes the same regardless of the circumstances or the perpetrators.
Meanwhile, Marjorie Taylor Green “apologized” yesterday for saying that wearing masks is like the Holocaust:
This was obviously a put-up job by the House GOP leadership which wants to provoke a big fight in the congress and censure Omar for antisemitism (and the Squad for some other unarticulated crimes) if the Dems try to censure Green for her obvious, clear antisemitism:
Greene’s public apology tour comes as one Jewish House Democrat, Illinois Rep. Brad Schneider, prepares to introduce a censure resolution condemning Greene’s latest comments on the Holocaust. Some Democrats are already privately discussing censure as a potential response to a group of Republican lawmakers pushing a censure resolution against one of their caucus members, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), for her recent remarks on Israel.
Neither party’s leaders have determined their next move on the floor on this matter. But the prospect of a tit-for-tat illustrated that both parties are continuing to grapple with how to respond to incendiary rhetoric in their ranks, with Democratic and GOP leaders alike eager to preserve unity among their own while talking up the discord across the aisle. Greene’s attempt to show remorse could help take some of the heat off her own party as the GOP prepares to go after Omar.
GOP leaders have condemned Greene for her remarks about the Holocaust but stopped short of calling for any disciplinary action. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy also defended Greene when Democrats kicked her off her committees earlier this year for calling some of the nation’s deadliest school shootings a hoax and endorsing social media posts that called for violence against top Democrats.
Greene also did not use her Monday apology to address remarks she made last year baselessly slamming liberal philanthropist and Holocaust survivor George Soros as “a piece of crap that turned in his own people over to the Nazis.”
House Democrats, however, say they could once again target Greene on the floor — particularly if GOP leaders force a vote condemning Omar’s comments. Greene’s museum visit was first reported by Punchbowl News.
Democrats are clear that they do not equate Greene’s long history of inflammatory comments to what Omar recently said about an International Criminal Court probe of war crimes allegations against both the Taliban and the U.S. in Afghanistan and by Hamas and Israel.
GOP leaders haven’t yet decided whether to force a vote on the floor to boot Omar from the the House Foreign Affairs Committee or to censure her, but they are eager to keep the spotlight on Democrats’ intraparty divisions. The topic was discussed at a GOP leadership meeting Monday afternoon, according to sources who were present, and is expected to come up again during a wider Republican conference meeting on Tuesday morning.
Democrats say few of their members would be likely to vote for either of those anti-Omar GOP resolutions on the floor, even among the 12 Democrats who called her out by name in a dramatic statement last week, according to several sources with the discussions. They say the Minnesota Democrat’s clarification was a good faith attempt to move beyond the controversy.
It was a good faith attempt to move beyond the controversy:
“On Monday, I asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken about ongoing International Criminal Court investigations.
“To be clear: the conversation was about accountability for specific incidents regarding those ICC cases, not a moral comparison between Hamas and the Taliban and the U.S. and Israel.
“I was in no way equating terrorist organizations with democratic countries with well-established judicial systems.”
Ilhan Omar stated a fact about specific cases of US and Israeli involvement in war crimes. It’s not a pleasant fact but it is true.
Marjorie Taylor Green’s statements might as well have been lifted from the Protocols of the the Elders of Zion.