Ilhan’s self-defense

Fury at my description of 9/11 is misplaced

Rep. Ilhan Omar defended describing the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as “some people did something” as she responded on Sunday to a 9/11 victim’s son who had criticized her at last week’s Ground Zero memorial while wearing a T-shirt printed with those words.

“Do you understand why people found that offensive?” CBS News’ Margaret Brennan asked Omar on “Face the Nation.”

The Minnesota Democrat answered by trying to explain away the controversial remarks.

“So 9/11 was an attack on all Americans. It was an attack on all of us. And I could certainly not understand the weight of the pain that the victims of the families of 9/11 must feel, but I think it is really important for us that we are not forgetting the aftermath of what happened after 9/11,” Omar said.

“Many Americans found themselves now having their civil rights stripped from them,” she continued.

“So what I was speaking to was, as a Muslim, not only was I suffering as an American who was attacked on that day, but the next day I woke up as my fellow Americans were now treating me as suspect.”

At the 9/11 remembrance ceremony on Wednesday, Nicholas Haros Jr. — whose mother, Frances, worked at the World Trade Center and was killed in the attacks — wore a black T-shirt that read, “Some people did something?” as he read from a list of victims’ names.

“Today I am here to respond to you exactly who did what to whom. Madam, objectively speaking, we know who and what was done,” Haros said.

Omar had made the controversial comment in March at a banquet held by the Council on AmericanIslamic Relations in Los Angeles.

During the CBS interview, Omar also dismissed accusations that she had compared US migrant detention centers to the slave trade.

“I’m only controversial because people want controversy,” she said when asked if she had meant for her comments to be interpreted that way.

On Saturday, a Republican National Committee Twitter account shared a video of Omar discussing her recent trip to Africa, during which lawmakers toured a dungeon where slaves facing exportation to America were kept.

Omar said the tour reminded her of recent images she had seen of people enslaved in Libya.

The tour guide also talked about how men and women were kept in separate spaces.

“I couldn’t stop seeing image of the current camps we have here at our borders in the United States,” Omar said.

“So of a story that happened 400 years ago, I constantly had this reminder, this horrifying image of many of the things that were taking place there in that dungeon now taking place whether it is in the shores of North Africa or the shores of the United States.”

On “Face the Nation,” Omar said she had been making two separate comparisons.

“If you listen to the video, one comparison of what the dungeons looked like and people being sold was to what’s happening in North Africa and the other one was of family separations,” she said.

“And, of course, we obviously have a crisis here with our family-separation policies.”

Asked if her words were meant as an attack on US border agents, Omar said, “Absolutely not.”