Studying the politics of Ilhan Omar I am struck by how similar they are to that of the brutal
dictator, Siad Barre, who governed Somalia with an iron fist when she was young
girl in that country.
When Barre seized power in a coup
d’etat in 1969, following the assassination of the president, Ali Shermarke, he
built a new political order, a one-party regime built on a mix of Communism and
a local form of political Islam.
He abrogated the constitution
within hours of his coup, and ruled the country by decree until he had time to
redraft a new constitution.
Are we not hearing calls to
repeal parts of the US Constitution by members of the new left in American
politics?
The United Nations profile of
Siad Barre explained, “The theoretical underpinning of the state ideology
combined aspects of the Qur’an with the influence of Marx, Lenin, Mao, and
Mussolini, but Siad Barre was pragmatic in its application. ‘Socialism is not a
religion,’ Barre explained, ‘It is a political principle to organize government
and manage production.’”
An organized Socialist government
managing production is the underpinning of the new left of the Democratic party
being promoted by Ilhan Omar.
When Barre grabbed power, Marxist
sympathies were not deep-rooted in Somalia. In order to achieve his political
goal, the dictator denigrated the opposition, did away with the previous
governments law enforcement, replacing it with his own tough enforcement police
and military rule.
Sound like the tactics of the
radical left today in America.
We hear calls of the radicals
within the Democratic Party to abolish ICE. We see the deliberate demoralization
of the police force in major cities controlled by the Democratic Party as part
of that process.
Ilhan Omar never explained what
she meant when she described her father, a central influence in her life, as
the Somali “teacher of teachers.”
It was a telling remark.
In Somalia, Siad Barre introduced
a nationwide indoctrination campaign. He appointed teacher trainers whose job
it was to indoctrinate the government-run education system into the dictator’s Koranic-Marxist-Leninist
ideology.
This radical Red-Green political
agenda can be found both in Britain with Jeremy Corbyn’s associations with
Islamist forces, including the IHRC in Britain, Hamas, Hezbollah and
Palestinian terrorists abroad.
We see it with Ilhan Omar who
goes on fund-raising junkets not for the Democratic Party but for CAIR, the
American branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and a co-conspirator for Hamas.
In Somalia, Barre moved from rule
control to thought control. Civil servants were required to attend
reorientation courses that combined professional training with the regime’s
political indoctrination. Anyone found incompetent or politically resistance
was fired.
The propaganda ministry reached
into national broadcasting and local communities with loudspeaker announcements
blasting the dictator’s political ideology in town squares. The regime’s
brainwashing continued as they raped, robbed and ruined their country which
descended into civil war.
Ilhan Omar may blame America for
the turmoil in Somalia but it was the Barre regime with his accolade of apparatchiks
that brought about the destruction of that country.
The regime set out to destroy
traditional social structures and reduce the opposition to powerlessness by
imposing its central control over the country. They depended on a compliant media.
Human Rights Watch issued a
report entitled, “Somalia. A Government at war with its own People.”
The United Nations Development
Programme declared, “The 21-year regime of Siad Barre had one of the worst
human rights records in Africa.”
The UN report on Somalia stated, “The
newly formed Ministry of Information and National Guidance set up local
political education bureaus to execute the government’s message to the people
and used Somalia’s print and broadcasting media for the ‘success of the socialist,
revolutionary road.’”
These bureaus required teacher
trainers to retrain teachers into the ideology of the regime.
It is legitimate to ask, was
Ilhan Omar’s father, the teacher of teachers, part of, perhaps a leader in, the
political education system in the service of a brutal genocidal dictator?
Was he the Josef Goebbels of the
Somali regime? The opposition certainly did not have teacher trainers.
The slogan of the Somali
Revolutionary Socialist Party was “social justice” and “scientific socialism”
as they delivered an intolerant national injustice.
There was a mass dismissal of non-compliant
civil servants in 1974. Ilhan Omar’s father apparently kept his job.
And what was the connection
between Nur Said Elmi and Mohammed Omar in Somalia?
Ilhan Omar’s remark that her “very
privileged life suddenly came to a halt” in Somalia reveals something
significant.
As the civil war raged in Somalia,
including torture, mass murder and the genocide of the opposition Isaaq tribe, no
one in the people’s opposition to Siad Barre lived “privileged lives” in
secure compounds.
Was it a coincidence that the
Said Elmi family did not flee from their “privileged lives” in their sheltered
compound in Mogadishu until just before the fall of the Barre regime?
Did Ilhan Omar’s father actively side
with the war criminal Barre, or did he side with the people?
To me, at least, the answer is
clear.
Another slip of the tongue, this
time by Ilhan’s sister, Sahra, is telling. Following Ilhan’s election to Congress, Sahra celebrated
by congratulating their father who, she claimed, was a “great political
strategist and fundraiser,” and that Ilhan Omar’s victory “would not
have been possible without him.”
One wonders where this talent and
aptitude came from. Could it have derived from his professional experience in
Somalia and his contacts with the Somali community in America, many of whom may
have been on the side of the war criminal, Barre?
Is America turning a blind eye to
people who entered the United States illegally and who aided and abetted a
murderous regime?
Would it be disqualifying to have
someone sit on the US Foreign Affairs Committee who is under the paternal
political and ideological guidance of someone who could have been close to the
top of a Marxist-Islamist dictatorship?
Why hasn’t the genocide committed
by the Siad Barre regime, and all those culpable in the human rights and war
crimes committed in Somalia, ever come before the International Court of
Justice?
Ilhan Omar and her father can produce
evidence of his role in the Somali civil war? Why have they been totally silent
about the burning issue?
There may be no there three, but surely an investigation is warranted
into the roles played by the senior members of the Said Elmi-Omar families in
Somalia under Barre? She talks about her grandfather, but not of her father.
Why? Especially if he is such a great political strategist.
It is clear that the
political ideology of Ilhan Omar is not too far removed from that of the Siad
Barre in Somalia. There are signs of a
Red-Green alliance emerging out of Democratic politics. Perhaps a part of that
derives from Somali politics.
Ilhan Omar hails from a country that never saw a Jew yet was steeped in anti-Semitism.
Omar never met a Jew in Somalia, nor in Kenya. She barely met a Jew in her Somali-community in Minnesota. Yet, she is a virile anti-Semite. It is a well-known cultural affliction throughout the Middle East.
Is Ilhan Omar the second generation of a family attempting to subvert the democratic system of their respective countries?
Ilhan Omar hails from a country that never saw a Jew yet was steeped in anti-Semitism.
Omar never met a Jew in Somalia, nor in Kenya. She barely met a Jew in her Somali-community in Minnesota. Yet, she is a virile anti-Semite. It is a well-known cultural affliction throughout the Middle East.
Is Ilhan Omar the second generation of a family attempting to subvert the democratic system of their respective countries?
Does America really want that
inflicted on the greatest democracy in the world in which the opposition party
is increasingly tilting radically left?
Barry Shaw is the International Public Diplomacy Director of
the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies and an expert on contemporary anti-Semitism. He is the author of 'Fighting Hamas, BDS and Anti-Semitism.'