On Monday, John Rossomando of the indispensable Investigative Project on Terrorism unearthed a rather troubling tweet from freshman congresswoman and serial anti-Semitic conspiracy theory dabbler Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN).
In 2017, around the time she was meeting at the United Nations with infamous Islamist strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, then-obscure Minnesota state representative Omar tweeted, in reference to the infamous 1993 U.S. military operation against a Somali warlord’s militia, and during which 19 U.S. military heroes paid the ultimate price: “In his selective memory, [Ron Harris] forgets to also mention the thousands of Somalis killed by the American forces that day! #NotTodaySatan.”
“Black Hawk Down,” or the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, was a famously brutal military operation involving U.S. Joint Special Operations. American soldiers displayed tremendous valor and heroism during the raid, which was eventually depicted in the eponymous Hollywood film.
But perhaps Rep. Omar might be conflicted, in assessing Black Hawk Down in retrospect. One is forced to wonder whether Omar considers the U.S. military to be comprised of war criminals, rather than upstanding heroes.
“She watches Black Hawk Down and roots for the other side,” tweeted Arthur Schwartz.
Per The Investigative Project on Terrorism:
The United States Army was the villain in the “Black Hawk Down” incident in Somalia, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., wrote in a 2017 Twitter post.
Omar, a Somali native elected to Congress last fall, was responding to a tweet that falsely described the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu as the worst terrorist attack in Somali history. The original tweet noted that 19 American soldiers were killed and 73 American soldiers were wounded.
“In his selective memory, [the writer] forgets to also mention the thousands of Somalis killed by the American forces that day! #NotTodaySatan,” Omar wrote while still a Minnesota state legislator. …
Her tweet saying that “thousands of Somalis [were] killed by the American forces” exaggerated the Somali death toll and omitted important context.
It completely missed the point of the U.S. involvement in Somalia, retired Chief Warrant Officer Mike Durant, who was shot down in Mogadishu on Oct. 3, 1993 and held captive by the militia loyal to Somali warlord Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid, told the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT). The U.S. military was in Somalia as part of a humanitarian mission to save starving Somalis and protect food and aid from being stolen by warring factions.
Somali casualty counts vary dramatically, in part due to the nature of the battle. But few credible estimates place the figure anywhere near the “thousands” Omar claimed were killed.
Only 133 Somali militiamen died in the fighting with U.S. Rangers and Delta Force soldiers, Capt. Haad, a representative of the Somali National Alliance (SNA) said in a 2001 interview with Author Mark Bowden. He estimated 500 Somali deaths in his book Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War, considered the definitive account of the Battle of Mogadishu. Others put the Somali death toll closer to 1,000. A 2000 Rand Corporation report estimated300 noncombatants were killed.
Omar’s moral relativism with respect to the U.S. military operation in her native Mogadishu is hardly the first instance of a highly impolitic moral relativism that has recently been dredged up. Following Omar’s trivialization of the worst terrorist attacks committed on U.S. soil in American history, wherein she described the 9/11 jihadist attacks as a mere instance of “some people [doing] something,” an old video also resurfaced of her downplaying the genocidal nature of the radical Islamic terrorist group (and perpetrator of the coordinated 9/11 jihadist attacks) al-Qaeda: