Congresswoman Ilhan Omar ripped former president Barack Obama for his policies including caging of kids at the U.S.-Mexico border and droning several countries around the globe.
In a rare indictment of Obama by a Democratic leader, Omar, a Somali-American immigrant, who represents a new generation of Democrats, also termed the former president’s promise of “hope and change” a mirage.
The Minnesota freshman lawmaker, who has shot to prominence with her blunt questioning of long-existing political policies and practices, told Politico Magazine that she saw the Democratic Party “ostensibly committed to progressive values had become complicit in perpetuating the status quo.”
She recalls the “caging of kids” at the U.S.-Mexico border and the “droning of countries around the world” under Obama’s presidency, arguing that the Democratic president operated within the same fundamentally broken framework as his Republican successor Donald Trump.
“We can’t be only upset with Trump. … His policies are bad, but many of the people who came before him also had really bad policies. They just were more polished than he was,” Omar says, according to the magazine, which quotes her in an article entitled “The Democrats’ Dilemma.”
Obama was often criticized for his foreign policy including mishandling of the Arab Spring revolutions, and drone strike that his White House allowed without much accountability and transparency. He was also called Deporter-in-Chief for sending a record number of undocumented immigrants back to their home countries. But the top Democratic leaders have rarely talked about his foreign policy failures.
Her comments suggested that Obama should not get away with murder because he is polished or pretty face.
“And that’s not what we should be looking for anymore. We don’t want anybody to get away with murder because they are polished. We want to recognize the actual policies that are behind the pretty face and the smile.”
