Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, called out Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., on Twitter for a video that showed Omar referring to the Sept. 11 attacks as “some people who did something” at an event supporting the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“First Member of Congress to ever describe terrorists who killed thousands of Americans on 9/11 as ‘some people who did something,'” Crenshaw tweeted. “Unbelievable.”
First Member of Congress to ever describe terrorists who killed thousands of Americans on 9/11 as “some people who did something”.
Unbelievable. https://t.co/IKtoZWWmIT
— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) April 9, 2019
Omar was speaking at an event supporting the council, an organization that the United Arab Emirates, a Muslim-majority country, considers a terrorist organization with ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, when she said it was founded after the deadly terrorist attacks in New York.
“CAIR was founded after 9/11, because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties,” Omar said.
The council is an advocacy group with a focus on Muslim civil rights and has denied ties to terrorist organizations, calling such accusations an Islamophobic stereotype. They are headquartered in Washington, D.C., on Capitol Hill with regional offices throughout the country.
Crenshaw, a 10-year veteran of the United States Navy and a Navy SEAL, medically retired from service in 2016 after losing an eye to an improvised explosive device while serving in Afghanistan in 2012.
The Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks were perpetrated by members of the terrorist organization al Qaeda, whose leader Osama bin Laden claimed responsibility for them in 2004. After the attacks, the United States launched the “War on Terror,” sparking its invasion of Afghanistan to defeat both the ruling Taliban and al Qaeda over the Taliban’s refusal to hand over bin Laden to the United States. The original attacks and ongoing conflict have been described by bin Laden and his followers as an obligation of the Islamic faith to attack and defeat Western ideology. Bin Laden was killed by SEAL Team Six in Pakistan in May 2011.
