[She doesn’t oppose an active U.S. foreign policy. She opposes
the myth — which frames so much official discourse in Washington —
that American foreign policy is intrinsically moral. ]
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WHEN ILHAN OMAR ASKS QUESTIONS, HER COLLEAGUES SHOULD LISTEN  
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Peter Beinart
January 30, 2023
New York Times
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_ She doesn’t oppose an active U.S. foreign policy. She opposes the
myth — which frames so much official discourse in Washington —
that American foreign policy is intrinsically moral. _

Ilhan Omar, Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.O)

 

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’s
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’s too bad.
Because what Ms. Omar has done is extraordinary.

In 2021, the Alliance of Democracies Foundation asked
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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’s Republicans and Democrats both largely take it for
granted that the United States — despite occasional blunders —
defends liberty. When discussing threats to human rights, they
generally attribute them to America’s foes. Ms. Omar is the
exception.

Consider what transpired at a hearing last April
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strategy in Asia. Michael McCaul, a Republican who is now the
committee’s chairman, declared that “Americans’ legacy in the
Indo-Pacific is freedom and prosperity” — and then warned that
China’s Communist Party threatens it. Ted Deutch a Democrat, told
the witness, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, that it was a
“premise that I think we all share” that “human rights needs to
be front and center in our foreign policy.” Having applauded the
Biden administration and his fellow committee members for their
devotion to human rights, Mr. Deutch asked about China’s repression
in Xinjiang and its arms sales in the Middle East.

When Ms. Omar’s turn came, the self-congratulation abruptly stopped.
She began by noting that during America’s last Cold War, the country
supported “brutal dictators” like Chile’s Augusto Pinochet and
Indonesia’s Suharto because they shared “a common enemy.” She
then asked Ms. Sherman why her administration was making Prime
Minister Narendra Modi of India “our new Pinochet.” Ms. Omar’s
colleagues discussed India primarily as a potential xxxxxx against
China and Russia. Only Ms. Omar spoke about American complicity in the
repression of minority groups in India. “How much does the Modi
administration have to criminalize the act of being Muslim in
India,” she asked, “for us to say something?”

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’s foes.
She asks uncomfortable questions about America’s 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 Guantánamo Bay and that China’s
president had reportedly cited
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“war on terror” as a justification for his own crackdown. A
witness who leads the Uyghur Human Rights Project concurred that
America’s actions had “paved the way for this comfortable labeling
Uyghurs as a terrorist” group by Beijing.

In a 2020 subcommittee hearing
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“Democratic Backsliding in sub-Saharan Africa,” Republican
Representative Tim Burchett expressed outrage that “some of the
officers who took part in the Mali coup d’état had recently
returned from Russia.” Only Ms. Omar noted that according to The
Washington Post
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the coup’s 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
“gross violations of human rights” 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
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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’t recall what he had told
investigators. He didn’t know if any of the Americans and Hondurans
charged in the massacre had been convicted. He didn’t know if any of
the victims had received compensation. Why was Mr. Robinson so
unprepared for Ms. Omar’s 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’s detractors might say all this reflects her
anti-Americanism. They’re wrong. Ms. Omar speaks idealistically
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“the moral authority the United States carries on the world stage
when we stand up for human rights.” She just recognizes — as do
many across the globe — that the United States doesn’t exercise
that moral authority nearly as often as our leaders claim.

She doesn’t oppose an active U.S. foreign policy. She opposes the
myth — which frames so much official discourse in Washington —
that American foreign policy is intrinsically moral. “We are human
beings like other human beings on this planet,” she wrote in 2021
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“with the same flaws and the same ambitions and the same
fragilities.”

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’s troops carrying American-made
guns. Ms. Omar asks the kinds of questions that these non-Americans
— whether they reside in Pakistan, Cuba or Cameroon — might ask
were they seated across from the officials who direct America’s
awesome power. She translates between Washington and the outside
world.

More often than not, she does so alone.

_Peter Beinart (@PeterBeinart [[link removed]]) 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._

_Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook
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* Ilhan Omar
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* Peter Beinart
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* U.S. foreign policy
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