Let’s get this out of the way: every sane person on planet Earth would love a world without nuclear weapons. No one wakes up in the morning thinking, “Boy, I hope a mushroom cloud is in my future.” So yes, in the abstract, Ilhan Omar’s call to reduce the global nuclear threat is something we can all nod along with.
But here’s where the train goes off the rails. Leave it to Omar to take something that should be a universal good and twist it into another chance to bash the United States. It’s like she has a speechwriter whose only job is to say, “Okay, but how can we make America the villain here?”
The Philosophy vs. The Reality
This week on the House floor, Omar called for the U.S. to join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, claiming that unless the world abolishes these weapons, humanity will eventually abolish itself. Deep thought, right? And on a Hallmark card, I’d agree with her.
But in the real world, there’s a dangerous gap between wishing for peace and pretending we can just wave a treaty around and make it happen. I don’t recall Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin, or the Ayatollah of Iran ever promising to lay down their bombs just because Ilhan asked nicely. That’s the kind of naïveté that gets people killed.
Selective History 101
The speech hit all the familiar notes: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, “sheer luck” that we haven’t blown ourselves up since 1945, and examples of near misses between nuclear powers. What she didn’t mention? That the only reason those near misses stayed “near” is because the other guys know we’re armed to the teeth.
Nuclear deterrence works. It’s not pretty, and no one likes it—but it has kept the biggest egos on Earth from lighting the fuse. You want to end that? Go ahead, take away the one thing that has prevented global war for 80 years. Then tell me how lucky you feel.
When the Knife Turns
And here’s the part that really grinds my gears. Omar could have given a speech that was simply about disarmament. She could have made it a message to the whole world, a call for unity, a moment to stand as one human race. Instead, she twisted the knife, making sure to emphasize that America—her own country—is the villain of the story.
She went after U.S. nuclear testing, brought up the pain of “downwind” communities, and made sure the emotional punch landed squarely on our chest. And let’s be clear: those communities deserve justice. They deserve acknowledgment. But her reason for mentioning them wasn’t to fix anything—it was to shame.
It’s a recurring theme with Omar: a speech that starts on common ground somehow always ends with America being the bad guy.
Reagan vs. Reality Show Politics
Omar even had the gall to cite Ronald Reagan as an example of what’s possible. Let me remind her what Reagan actually did. He didn’t just say “let’s all get along”; he rebuilt our military, stared down the Soviets, and negotiated arms reductions from a position of overwhelming strength. That’s why it worked.
Omar wants to skip all that boring “strength” stuff and jump straight to the singing kumbaya part. History shows that doesn’t work. That’s how you get wars, not peace.
A Universal Good, Ruined by a Familiar Pattern
In the end, Omar took a topic that could have been unifying and turned it into yet another episode of “Why America Is Awful.” The philosophical point—getting rid of nuclear weapons—isn’t wrong. It’s the way she framed it: not as a shared global mission, but as a blame game where we’re the permanent villain.
I’d love to live in a world without nuclear weapons. I’d also love to live in a world where a member of Congress can make a speech about peace without stabbing their own country in the back. Sadly, that world doesn’t exist.
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JIMMY
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