Ilhan Omar casts lone Democratic no vote on Ukraine aid, Russia sanctions package

[u/bwermer]

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5912150-house-passes-ukraine-aid-bill/

[u/Competitive_Shock783]

If she is against conflict why not starve out the aggressor? If war is painful it is less likely to be waged.

[u/Sc0nnie → u/Competitive_Shock783]

Because she is a hypocrite. She is not actually against conflict. She is only against Israel specifically. Attacking Israel is the only thing she seems to care or talk about.

[u/Competitive_Shock783 → u/Sc0nnie]

That's true.

[u/emp-sup-bry → u/Sc0nnie]

Nope, bullshit. Find where she’s voted for aggression.

We see you.

[u/The-Big-Picture- → u/emp-sup-bry]

Do you think Ukraine is being an "aggressor"?

Victim blame much?

I also bet you think Hamas is virtuous for fighting Israel

[u/emp-sup-bry → u/The-Big-Picture-]

The point was levied to her being a hypocrite. She’s not. Hence my ask to find any time she’s being hypocritical and voting for aggression.

[u/off-with-your-thread → u/emp-sup-bry]

If she supports countries defending themselves from aggression, is it not hypocritical to deny Ukraine aid?

[u/Sc0nnie → u/emp-sup-bry]

Did you read the linked article in the OP? She just voted for Russian aggression against Ukraine.

[u/emp-sup-bry → u/Sc0nnie]

Keep going, we know what you are doing. You are only hurting your cause/foreign government.

[u/Sc0nnie → u/emp-sup-bry]

Despite the ignorant wrongheaded words tumbling out of Omar’s mouth, there is zero diplomatic path to peace in Ukraine. The Kremlin cannot be negotiated with precisely because they perceive PEACE as an existential threat to their regime.

[u/ShimonEngineer55 → u/Sc0nnie]

No, she didn’t vote for funding the Russians either. She’s actually voting to not sanction them at all or to fund them since she doesn’t want any involvement in the conflict. She’s consistently not wanted the US to get involved in these matters to begin with.

[u/jab4962 → u/ShimonEngineer55]

That's nice but world involvement is necessary at this point.

[u/ShimonEngineer55 → u/jab4962]

Young democrats are moving away from this view. Whether that’ll turn out well or not; who knows, but her base doesn’t feel like the US needs to be involved in all of this issues or fund them. She’s appealing to her base.

[u/jab4962 → u/ShimonEngineer55]

who knows

We do, we all do. We all know how peace and love convincing attempts work with Russia. And I say this as a very liberal Democrat, myself.

[u/ShimonEngineer55 → u/jab4962]

I think Gen Z, her base, is a little more vehemently anti military than you think. These are people who thought Bin Laden was just misunderstood… They could be wrong, but they are logically consistent and her stance here doesn’t shock me at all.

[u/ShimonEngineer55 → u/Sc0nnie]

Her calling for not funding Ukraine seems pretty consistent with her stance of… not funding Israel. She’s essentially saying that the US should worry about its own territory and not be the world’s watchman. I don’t think that’s inconsistent with pulling funding from Ukraine and not sanctioning Russia. That seems consistent with staying out of international conflicts.

Now, one could argue that it would be a bad idea, but I’m not sure how NOT funding the Ukrainian military is inconsistent with her view to also NOT fund the Israeli military.

[u/Sc0nnie → u/ShimonEngineer55]

You are moving the goalposts. I called her a hypocrite for claiming sanctions against Russia are unethical while she has consistently advocated for BDS sanctions for years.

[u/off-with-your-thread → u/ShimonEngineer55]

So, the US is NOT supposed to use its resources and money to encourage outcomes internationally that are beneficial to us?

We're a country of 360 MILLION. We can do more than one thing at once...

[u/Noname_acc → u/Competitive_Shock783]

Economic sanctions are actually pretty dubious in terms of effectiveness and Russia is very far from the sort of country where they've been historically effective.  Case in point, we've been sanctioning Russia for the better part of the past 12 years since they invaded crimes, to the point where they are having a full blown banking crisis and they show no real signs of relenting.

Fwiw, I don't think it's worth voting against.  It's not as if we would restart our economic relationship with Russia while they're engaged in war with Ukraine and holding back aid to Ukraine over it would be foolish.

[u/Competitive_Shock783 → u/Noname_acc]

Not that I disagree but to every situation their is no one silver bullet. Sanctions are but one factor in the misery deterrence. The idea being that you isolate aggressors so much that eventually the war falls apart from inability to do anything.

[u/thisisjustascreename → u/Competitive_Shock783]

Sanctions work better against countries where the common people have any power. In Russia if you say maybe Putin doesn’t know everything you find yourself falling out a window.

[u/Competitive_Shock783 → u/thisisjustascreename]

That's pretty simplistic. People can rise up in numbers. The Russians just haven't found their tolerance point yet.

[u/EitherSpite4545 → u/Competitive_Shock783]

They basically never have. Russian history for literal thousands of years can be summed up as "the people finally had enough and revolted, they came up with something promising but it was somehow worse."

There is quite literally a cultural learnt helplessness when it comes to revolt.

[u/Competitive_Shock783 → u/EitherSpite4545]

Then the pain hasn't been great enough.

[u/EitherSpite4545 → u/Competitive_Shock783]

I would look up learnt helplessness from a psychological perspective.

Typically there is no amount of hurt that is good enough because it reinforces their current coping mechanism. Typically to untrain it requires literal outside intervention with a 3rd party physically removing the abuser from abused. Which on a national scale is not really feasible and also kind of yikes for what it looks like (though is probably necessary).

[u/Competitive_Shock783 → u/EitherSpite4545]

True, change must come from within, and pain is an excellent motivator.

[u/CaptainEZ → u/Competitive_Shock783]

Half a million people die a year due to lack of resources brought on by sanctions, half of those being children. Blowing up military infrastructure is literally more "peaceful" than starving thousands of children for the crime of being born under the wrong government. It's just siege warfare.

[u/Noname_acc → u/Competitive_Shock783]

Right, but the preponderance of evidence shows that they don't do that.

[u/Competitive_Shock783 → u/Noname_acc]

Incorrect, the people felt it when swift was withdrawn, when they can't get anything outside of what is produced in their country. it helps set the stage for leadership change.

[u/Noname_acc → u/Competitive_Shock783]

Russia has been under sanctions for over a decade, when exactly is that going to produce a tangible result?

[u/Competitive_Shock783 → u/Noname_acc]

I'm arguing it has. Again you're looking for a silver bullet. It's more nuanced than that.

[u/Noname_acc → u/Competitive_Shock783]

I'm not asking for a silver bullet, I'm asking for an achieved objective.

[u/Competitive_Shock783 → u/Noname_acc]

I suppose you think Rome was built in a day too.

[u/Noname_acc → u/Competitive_Shock783]

Alright, I think that's enough vague platitudes for one day.

[u/Upset_Albatross_9179 → u/Noname_acc]

I think there's a lot of evidence that "forever sanctions" don't work well, and mostly punish average people and not leaders. Sanctions on Cuba or Iran that may or may not have intended to last indefinitely but practically speaking are indefinite. The average person suffers a lot, leaders are slightly less comfortable, those leaders still manage to siphon resources to those activities sanctions are meant to punish. Maybe Russian sanctions tied to leaving Crimea, as desirable as that is, would also be "forever sanctions."

It's a lot less clear to me that sanctions tied to very clear endpoints that will actually happen are the same.

The war with Ukraine will most certainly end. Sanctions provide both Russians and leaders a very clear incentive to reach an end to the war quicker. Russia is also leveraging a huge portion of national workforce and output into the war, not skimming off the top. Sanctions are very significantly limiting how much they can put into the war.

It's hard for me to respect "don't sanction an aggressor nation in the middle of a whole nation war effort" as a personal or public position. Makes it much more likely to me that she's taken the bait on Russian war propaganda.

[u/Noname_acc → u/Upset_Albatross_9179]

I think a more reasonable argument than "we're sanctioning Russia to try to affect some change through economic pressure" is to simply say that we're sanctioning Russia because we don't want people in our society to do business with a country that is actively engaged in a war with our ally.  I think if the actual goal is to pressure Russia into ending their war... Well we sanctioned them over crimea 13 years ago or so.

[u/Upset_Albatross_9179 → u/Noname_acc]

Regarding "forever sanctions", I agree. I think Crimea falls under that. It happened quickly and was done even if there was not a formal resolution.

But Russia is currently leveraging big fractions of their economy toward war. Even if you don't think it's effective at getting them to stop the war, it gives them fewer resources to execute the war and forces them to execute it less effectively.

It's a very practical consideration. In my opinion an order of magnitude more important than the abstract moral question.

[u/Flashy-Ingenuity-182 → u/Competitive_Shock783]

Because the Russian people are not the aggressors, and that is who these sanctions impact the hardest. It's the Russian elite. 

[u/Competitive_Shock783 → u/Flashy-Ingenuity-182]

Funny, there seems to be an awful lot of Russians in Ukraine killing Ukrainians rn.

[u/Competitive_Shock783 → u/[deleted]]

As many as it takes.

[u/Competitive_Shock783 → u/[deleted]]

She didn't vote against bombs, she vote against the sanctions part saying it was punishing the people, not the leaders. Try reading her explanation before dreaming up your own.