“Jihadist”, “Muslim Brotherhood guy”, “on the side of the terrorists”: these are the kinds of defamations that Donald Trump is deploying against Abdul El-Sayed.
There is, of course, the blatant racism, but also the insinuation that El-Sayed’s candidacy represents a national security crisis. “He would be the only senator who will have to pass a metal detector before being allowed into the Senate,” Trump said Sunday at a rally for El-Sayed’s opponent.
A quarter century after 9/11 and we still have to go through metal detectors to get on a plane. Now the government wants your vote to also go through the same security theater.
Like Trump, Washington’s case against the 41-year-old populist candidate for Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat isn’t about policy or positions. This just shows how dangerous it is to “national security” – and by extension, how unqualified you are to understand the dangers.
“Abdul El-Sayed’s radical ideology poses a threat to our national security,” said El-Sayed’s opponent, former Congressman Mike Rogers. Rogers is a former FBI agent and served as Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
Casual racism is not new, but the attempt to dignify it through security discourse is. This is absurd on two levels. First, the speech I cited does not say that El-Sayed’s policies or positions are dangerous; They say he’s the one, as if he’s going to run for Congress wearing a suicide vest. Second, it takes what is supposed to be an exercise of popular will and turns it into a “national security” issue of a technical nature.
Imagine applying literally any other type of technical standard to a politician and the absurdity becomes obvious. “Abdul El-Sayed” – not his politics but the man himself – “is a threat to municipal wastewater management.” “It has a destabilizing influence on air traffic control.” “It poses an existential threat to the integrity of the nation’s bridge.”
Saying that a political candidate poses a threat to national security is equally stupid; but because it is language we are so accustomed to hearing from Washington, the madness of it is barely perceptible. Washington likes the national security framework because it doesn’t generate much interest among ordinary people, unlike issues such as affordability and health care — the centerpiece of El-Sayed’s campaign. This is a ploy to shift the debate from public concerns to those of think tank “experts” and professional commentators.
In one of the more amusing demonstrations of this phenomenon, the Washington Times recently published a letter to the editor from a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer raising the question surely on the minds of Michigan voters: Can El-Sayed pass a background investigation to obtain a security clearance?
According to the letter:
“I wonder if he could pass even a basic security clearance exam, let alone come within a mile of the type of classified material that Mike Rogers had access to in the United States House of Representatives.”
Put aside for a moment the scary idea that elected officials should need approval from the national security bureaucracy to know things, which is not a thing (yet). Imagine any other type of certification or credential applied to an election. For example: “I wonder if Abdul El-Sayed could pass a forklift operator’s certificate, let alone come within a mile of the heavy machinery that Mike Rogers had access to.
It’s laughable. And yet it is the attack of choice not only from El-Sayed’s opponent, but also from the president and other senior officials, including sitting senators.
“Chuck Schumer could put Abdul El-Sayed on the Senate Intelligence Committee,” Senator Ted Cruz said recently, warning of the grave danger facing our beloved troops:
“He would have access to the highest level of classified material. And I think if that were to happen, there would be an unacceptably high risk that the lives of American servicemen and women would be in danger, and our secret intelligence assets, their lives would be in danger because there is every reason to believe that Abdul El-Sayed would share this classified information with the Muslim Brotherhood terrorists.”
Secret intelligence assets. Access to the highest level. Classified information. Is this an election or a Tom Clancy novel?
In other words, you can’t vote for this man, not because of his political positions or how he might vote in Congress, but because he might leak state secrets to an organization he has consistently denounced. Oh, the horror (just in time for Halloween)!
Sen. Tim Sheehy of Montana, who sits on the Armed Services Committee, says much the same thing, warning of the “serious national security questions” raised by El-Sayed’s character:
“Abdul El-Sayed’s ties to this group raise serious national security questions. As senators, we have access to some of our country’s most sensitive classified information, and I am seriously concerned about the security risks posed by anyone associated with such a group serving in the Senate.”
I could go on and on like this, but you get the idea. This is spitting in the face not only of El-Sayed, but of anyone who thinks they can choose who to vote for without help from mom and dad in Washington.
— Edited by William M. Arkin
Gn usa
