WASHINGTON — Michigan Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed once mocked former President Barack Obama’s drone attack on a U.S. citizen suspected of being an al-Qaeda leader and issued a dramatic warning to the Muslim Brotherhood, according to resurfaced reports.
In a 2011 HuffPost article denouncing potential budget cuts, El-Sayed lamented that lawmakers appeared to be working harder to prevent cuts to the Pentagon than to social programs, while emphasizing their concerns about wars in the Middle East.
“Beyond the decade-long effort that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives – Afghan and American – in Afghanistan, our military is conducting daily drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen,” he wrote in the article.
“More recently, in fact, one of these drone strikes carried out the extrajudicial assassination of an American citizen. Shortly afterward, another was ordered to assassinate his 16-year-old son, also an American. Not to mention our misguided, baseless and extremely damaging war in Iraq.”
Earlier that year, Obama authorized a drone strike to kill Anwar Nasser Abdulla al-Awlaki, a key al-Qaeda organizer, who had dual Yemeni and American citizenship. He was the first American citizen deliberately killed in a government drone strike.
In another resurfaced article, El-Sayed worried that the Muslim Brotherhood and another Islamist party that took power after Egypt’s 2011 revolution might adopt radical socialist policies.
After the resignation of Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak in 2011, El-Sayed wrote several opinion pieces supporting the protesters who swept the country and strategizing how Egypt could maintain democracy.
In a February 2012 Al Jazeera article co-written with Jisung Park, then a doctoral student in economics at Harvard University, he warned that Egypt’s future would depend on its economic choices.
“The impressive election results achieved by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafist Al-Nour Party – both Egyptian Islamic parties – were likely more a product of their domestic agendas and history of social justice than voters’ resonance with Islamic ideologies,” the pair wrote.
At the time, the Muslim Brotherhood bloc had secured about 47 percent of the seats in Egypt’s parliament, and the radical Islamist Salafi bloc Al-Nour had secured 24 percent.
Ironically, El-Sayed, known for his left-wing views during his run for the Senate, joined Park in warning Egypt against pursuing radical redistributive economic policies. Both El-Sayed and Park drew comparisons between how North and South Korea have chosen to develop.
“In light of the commercial corruption that characterized the Egyptian economy throughout the Mubarak years, it may be tempting for these parties to adopt radical redistribution policies from the start,” the two men acknowledged.
“But the ruling coalition must resist the temptation to shut down Egypt’s economy and redistribute its dwindling gains by (nationalizing) private industries or raising tariff barriers. »
The two men pointed out that although North Korea’s centralized economy “led to faster economic growth in the short term (early 1950s),” Pyongyang ultimately “stagnated.”
The article was discovered by journalist Eitan Fischberger, who also dug up a 2011 Guardian article in which El-Sayed urged Obama to support protesters in Egypt.
“As an American, I ask you to support these freedom fighters because not only is it in our American interest to promote democracy in the Middle East, it is the only path our ideals allow us,” he argued in the article.
“As an Egyptian, I ask you to support them because I personally know the injustice that the Mubarak regime has inflicted. »
El-Sayed faced scrutiny during his run for Michigan Senate because of his thoughts on the Muslim Brotherhood, with which he has denied having ties.
The Muslim Brotherhood is known for its radical offshoots such as Hamas and is designated as a terrorist organization in several Middle Eastern countries – but not in the United States.
At the time of the 2011 Egyptian revolution, El-Sayed’s half-sister claimed that her family was very supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sayed also had relatives working for groups linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.
At one point, he signed a letter urging Egypt’s new president Mohamed Morsi, a leading figure in the Muslim Brotherhood, to “purge” the media and police. Morsi then launched an infamous crackdown on journalists and protesters, which led to a coup against him.
The new senator now insists he disavows the Muslim Brotherhood and mocks the attention he received during the campaign.
“I have a brother. He’s Muslim. He and I have a Muslim brotherhood,” he joked at Crooked Con last week.
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