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Democratic party elites silence Ilhan Omar at their peril

"JimLur, Vile creature. It's so easy to post unsubstantiated, even totally fabricated, smear jobs against political opponents..."

The congresswoman’s foreign policy views are far more in line with voters than the disconnected party establishment

Trita Parsi and Stephen Wertheim

Sat 16 Feb 2019 06.00 EST
Last modified on Sat 16 Feb 2019 06.32 EST

VIDEO - Ilhan Omar grills Trump’s Venezuela envoy over past – video

This week Democrats plunged into two controversies that portend danger for the party as the 2020 election season begins. Both centered on freshman representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who, not coincidentally, came to America as a Somali refugee and is now one of the two first Muslim women in Congress. Absent an open debate about the party’s values on foreign policy, Democrats are hurtling toward an election more divisive than the one in 2016.

Ilhan Omar is right about the influence of the Israel lobby
Alex Kotch
Read more > https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/13/ilhan-omar-is-right-about-the-influence-of-the-israel-lobby

[...]

Young Democrats are not likely to agree that one violent misdeed after another is somehow acceptable as long as it is performed by the US or in the name of democracy or humanitarianism. Those were the rationales, now revived in defense of Abrams, that produced impunity for the Iraq war, a disastrous war of aggression. Ordinary citizens consistently display more skepticism of military intervention than do foreign policy elites. They are pushing their representatives to express the goal of peace. The election of Omar herself reflects this sentiment. And as a result of grassroots mobilization, the House this week, driven by progressives like Representative Ro Khanna, passed historic legislation to end US support for the Saudi war in Yemen.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/16/democratic-party-elites-silence-ilhan-omar

See also:

THE ARCHITECTS OF IRAQ WAR: WHERE ARE THEY NOW
A brief review of why Bush Jr. invaded Iraq ....
just another instance of the gross imcompetence of the Bush gang....
[...]
ELLIOT ABRAMS
Role In Going To War: Abrams was one of the defendants in the Iran-Contra Affair, and he pled guilty to two misdemeanor counts of withholding information from Congress. He was appointed Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director on the National Security Council for Near East and North African Affairs during Bush’s first term, where he served as Bush’s chief advisor on the Middle East. His name surfaced as part of the investigation into who leaked the name of a undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame. [Washington Post, 5/27/03, 2/3/05]
P - Where He Is Now: Abrams was promoted to deputy national security adviser in February of 2005. In that position, he has led a smear campaign to attack Speaker Nancy Pelosi for visiting Syria. [Slate, 2/17/05; IPS, 4/9/07; Washington Post, 2/15/07]
P - Key Quote: “We recognize that military action in Iraq, if necessary, will have adverse humanitarian consequences. We have been planning over the last several months, across all relevant agencies, to limit any such consequences and provide relief quickly.” [CNN, 2/25/03]
2010 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=54098795