Jun 22, 2019
Citing her firsthand experience of the horrors of military conflict as a refugee from war-torn Somalia, Rep. Ilhan Omar Thursday night made an impassioned case against war with Iran amid reports that President Donald Trump approved—then abruptly called off—airstrikes on a number of Iranian targets.
“Mr. President, as a survivor of war, I want to tell you: going to war does not make you strong. It makes you weak,” Omar wrote in a series of tweets. “Sending teenagers to die, or return with lifelong wounds seen and unseen, does not make you a bigger person. It makes you smaller. Risking a regional or even global armed conflict does not strengthen our country. It weakens us.”
Omar was among a chorus of progressive voices denouncing the Trump administration’s march to war, but the Minnesota Democrat’s personal story as the first Somali refugee ever elected to Congress made her opposition to war with Iran uniquely compelling.
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