Abdul El-Sayed is in hot water in certain corners of the internet over a tweet from five years ago in which he said that on 9/11 itself he would mourn the victims of the terrorist attack but that the next day he would mourn the tragic ways in which the American response went awry.
My sincere advice to anyone considering a run for elected office at any point in their life would be to never, under any circumstances, try to say anything thoughtful or provocative around a national day of mourning.
That said, as someone in the line of work where you are supposed to be thoughtful and provocative, this statement seems completely reasonable.
The view that the American military response to 9/11 ended up being unproductive is very widely held. Many innocent people died as a result of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. An enormous amount of money was spent, money which could’ve been used in many other, better ways. Lots of American soldiers died or were injured. I used to be on the same workout schedule as a guy who lost his left foot to an I.E.D. in Iraq. I respect his service and the service of others I know who fought in those wars, but unlike my grandfather who fought the Nazis, I can’t really say that their sacrifices were worth it.
It’s a pretty fucked up situation, and El-Sayed is right about that.
Unless, of course, he’s actually a hardcore anti-American Islamo-leftist who hates this country and is leaping at the opportunity to besmirch its name on a sacred day of mourning.
But is he?
There’s certainly no evidence within the text of that tweet that he is. It’s true that if you want to look at the most outré things Hasan Piker has ever said and then assert both that those things reflect Piker’s true feelings about the world and that El-Sayed’s association with Piker during the Michigan Senate primary campaign reflects his uncritical endorsement of that version of Piker’s worldview, you can read the tweet that way. But that’s a fully circular argument. If El-Sayed had never tweeted about 9/11, you could still be mad about the other stuff. Being mad about the tweet doesn’t add anything.
And he has specifically disavowed Piker’s remarks about 9/11. What’s more, El-Sayed supports Western aid to Ukraine — he is not part of the campist anti-American left, while Piker seems to be.
Not to do a whole take about 9/11, and I don’t want to get started on Piker, but this is an illustration of a problematic internet trend where you decide first that someone is your enemy, then read everything he says through the presumption that he’s a bad guy, and then treat this purely circular reasoning as if it’s new evidence of new wrongdoing.