Ocasio-Cortez Tries to Defend Ilhan Omar. Ends Up Making Disastrous Comment About 9/11.

“All of Congress was wrong.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez declared Monday night that the United States was wrong to go to war after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The congresswoman from New York, who was until recently a bartender with no policy experience, issued the blanket condemnation of US foreign policy in defense of her fellow freshman Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. Omar has come under bipartisan fire for last week again criticizing the US-Israel relationship in terms many saw as anti-Semitic.

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Ocasio-Cortez was responding, in particular, to tweets by Rep. Juan Vargas, a California Democrat, condemning Omar’s comments and saying it is “unacceptable” to question US support for the Jewish state.

I‘m curious if Rep. Vargas will further explain his stance here that it’s unacceptable to even *question* US foreign policy.

Plenty of Dem members have asserted that discussion + debate on this issue is fair and merited. Is this stance a departure from that? https://t.co/2tcelsxFCU

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 5, 2019

Ocasio-Cortez said she remembered when it was also “unacceptable” to question the Iraq War, falsely claiming that only one lawmaker, Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee of California, had voted against the 2003 invasion. (Ocasio-Cortez celebrated her 13th birthday days ahead of the 2002 vote.)

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“History shows that making some questions ‘unacceptable’ is a mistake,” Ocasio-Cortez continued, taking the opportunity to repeat her condemnation of US Special Envoy to Venezuela Elliot Abrams for his involvement in an illegal anti-communist intervention in South America in the 1980s.

Or now, even with a disastrous choice like Elliot Abrams at the helm (a man guilty of crimes related to Iran-contra, including misleading Congress) – it still seems like critiquing US interventionism is taboo.

History shows that making some questions “unacceptable” is a mistake.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 5, 2019

However, the factually-challenged congresswoman was wrong again: A majority of Democrats in fact voted against the Iraq War, along with seven Republicans.

After being called out on her error, Ocasio-Cortez doubled-down, saying she had been referring to the previous year’s vote to authorize the Afghanistan War but that both wars had been a mistake anyway.

(But honestly we shouldn’t have been in either, and we should end the AUMF now while we’re at it)

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 5, 2019

The Authorization of Use of Force was passed on September 14, 2001, three days after the deadliest terrorist attack in US history. It authorized then-President George W. Bush to “use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.”

While at the time 80 percent of Americans favored a ground invasion of Afghanistan, from where Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist group planned the Sept. 11 attacks, a debate has emerged in recent years over the wisdom of that decision. Ocasio-Cortez did not elaborate on what response she would have preferred.

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