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Dalia Al-Aqidi Challenges Ilhan Omar for House Seat

• Published January 17, 2020
• By Clarion Project

• NEWS AND OPINION
• Published January 17, 2020
• By Clarion Project

Dalia Al-Aqidi Challenges Ilhan Omar for House Seat

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Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and journalist Dalia Al-Aqidi (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images; courtesy)American Muslim Dalia Al-Aqidi has formally launched her campaign to oust Congresswoman Ilhan Omar from Minnesota’s 5th district. Her campaign, Dalia for Congress, is rooted in her life experience as an Iraqi refugee, a veteran journalist with a distinguished track record and in her desire to protect America from becoming another country to escape from.

“I’ve seen up close the consequences of what radical Ilhan Omar is doing. Conflict. Division. Oppression. I escaped that world once, and I won’t let it happen here. I’m running for Congress because we’re not as divided as Ilhan Omar and the far-left would have us believe. I’m running to bring us closer together.” – Dalia Al-Aqidi

 

Born in Iraq, Dalia  and her family fled the country in 1988 due to harsh persecution by Saddam Hussein, leaving almost every possession behind. Her family created a new life for themselves and became U.S. citizens.

Prior to Dalia and her family’s immigration to the U.S., with the help of late U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, she was politically active against Hussein’s brutality and oppression of the Iraq people.

Dalia has seen the consequences of Omar’s version of an ideal government—she’s seen the kind of hatred it inspires and what it has done to the Middle East. That’s why Dalia felt that it was her responsibility to stop her—to stop the widening rift among Americans and instead unite our country under the values that she immigrated here for.

Immediately, her campaign received tremendous support, including from distinguished anti-Islamists like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, also of Somali heritage.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

✔@Ayaan

To all my American followers please look up this brave and patriotic woman: Dalia Al-Aqidi.
Here is a quote from her:

“I am loyal to the country that gave me a chance, gave me a brighter future,”.
Dalia is challenging Ilhan Omar. I am with Dalia.

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Radical changes imposed on our military by progressives, begun in earnest during the Obama administration, are negatively impacting our combat readiness and jeopardizing the lives of our men and women in uniform and, ultimately, our national security.  In Stand Down:  How Social Justice Warriors Are Sabotaging America’s Military, author James Hasson elucidates how Barack Obama fundamentally changed military culture to make our nation less secure. Hasson, a former Army captain, Army Ranger School graduate, and Afghanistan veteran, argues that military readiness was sacrificed for identity politics and progressive rhetoric. He lists examples such as policies that established “safe spaces,” prohibited “micro-aggressions,” denigrated “hyper-masculine” traits, implemented unwise “green” standards and injected “social justice” guidelines in military operations.

In his revealing book, Captain Hasson describes how Obama’s military appointees, mainly progressive ideologues lacking military experience and hailing from academic, political, and the private sectors, were placed in charge of seasoned combat generals with decades of combat experience.  The priorities, experience, and philosophies of the officers and appointees couldn’t have been more disparate. 

Many senior military staff members suffered in silence at Obama’s attempt to use the military as a “laboratory for progressive social engineering,” according to Hasson.  Exemplifying this shift was the naming of Navy ships after Leftist political heroes. Socialist labor-activist Cesar Chavez and slain gay-rights advocate Harvey Milk — who left the Navy for being gay — were among those who Ray Mabus, Obama’s secretary of the Navy, announced would have ships named after them.  This practice flew in the face of the hallowed Navy tradition of naming ships after presidents and war heroes.  

Obama, who, Hasson says, took pride in his lack of military knowledge and experience, made widespread changes to personnel policy, budgetary expenditures and resource allocations that harmed readiness, training and troop safety.  Obama’s transgender policy of “mixed genitalia in the bathrooms,” took precedence over established military culture.  Soldiers were judged by the gender they wished to be rather than their biological sex.  Obama essentially used the military to lead social change in American society rather than preserving time-honored traditions that emphasized troop cohesiveness and readiness. 

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“American citizenship is eroding”

November 2019  • • Victor Davis Hanson

The following is an abridged version of a talk delivered at Hillsdale College on October 2, 2019, during the College’s 175th anniversary gala. Videos of this and other speeches delivered during the gala are available at fourpillars.hillsdale.edu.

Today many condemn the idea of nationalism by connecting it to race hatred (e.g., white nationalism). But historically, the modern nation-state has proven uniquely suitable to preserving individual rights. The American nation in particular was successful in uniting individuals of different races, ethnic backgrounds, and creeds into one people based on shared principles, a unique physical space, and a common national story. Our nation is the best example in human history of positive nationalism.

The key to this benign nationalism is American citizenship, based on an understanding of American exceptionalism and formed by the American melting pot. But today, our citizenship is eroding and, along with it, American nationalism in the positive sense is disappearing.

American citizenship is eroding in three ways.

First, we are blurring the line between mere residents and citizens. We have between 45-50 million non-native-born residents in the U.S. today—the largest absolute number we’ve ever had. There’s no legal problem with the 30 million of them who have green cards or have acquired citizenship—although even 30 million is a challenge for the American melting pot to assimilate and integrate.

But we also have, according to a recent Yale and MIT study, about 20 million people who are here illegally. In regard to them, the classical ingredients of American citizenship—the right to leave or enter the country as one pleases, for example, or to vote in elections, or to reside here as long as one pleases—are being blurred.

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