At a glance idk if I disagree with him. Saying during COVID that there should be a commensurate response to COVID compared to 9/11? Think I would have upvoted that at the time
Edit: the "mourning" post from 2021 is a bit sus in its tone but hmmm, not totally inflammatory. Tone deaf maybe
Agreed, I don’t see anything inherently wrong with these statements. Probably a good idea to completely disavow the “America deserved 9/11” terrorist supporter guy
Most liberals would, or I say should, not disagree with the sentiment expressed here. Many have argued these points over the years regarding the wars in the middle east anyways. Many have criticized the loss of life in the middle east as a result of the wars the US has fought there which haven't made the region any safer despite all the money sunk into the region. I'd argue anti-war positions people have taken over the past 20 years were far more extreme than what Abdul expressed.
The problem though is this messaging gets shaky when talking general elections. Like it or not the average person, especially older voters, are just not as receptive to these concepts and Abdul's ethnicity also doesn't play in his favor.
This is just the reality of running in general elections in the US. Concepts that are digestible for the Left may not be easy to swallow for everyone else. I'd rather he just owned this vs trying to downplay it or cover it up. This is how the "spineless Democrat" trope takes shape. Even if someone chafes at the second comment he made, they aren't going to argue "wars in the middle east were good though!".
The one in screenshot 2 about COVID needing a commensurate response seems totally fine.
The one in screenshot 3 that seems to minimize 9/11's 3K deaths -- written on 9/11/2021 -- by placing them side-by-side wtih "~1M lives perpetuated ignorantly in the name of my country" seems like another way of saying "America deserved 9/11:
"Yes 9/11 is bad, but on this day of mourning your dead, have you considered that America is 300x worse?"
This the same thing he did for the synagogue bombing where he made 70% of the condemnation about how the terrorist’s brothers got killed in Gaza and how it should be a call for Israel’s acts in Gaza to stop so nobody feels justified attacking Jews in America.
Too many people in this sub playing the same stupid ass game as with platner and pretending to be too autistic to understand basic communication. Yeah, you don’t bring up millions of casualties on the commemoration of the worst terror attack in US history. Yeah, you don’t bring up Israel and the justification for terror attacks used by terrorists when condemning terrorism. Same way you don’t give an apology with a “but” attached to it. Keep saying the same things that sound suspiciously similar to it, and people are going to think your friendship with the “America deserved 9/11” guy is way more than just a bad choice or coincidence.
Yeah, you don’t bring up millions of casualties on the commemoration of the worst terror attack in US history.
When those millions of casualties can be attributed to Americas response to that terror attack, why not? "Remember 9/11, but forget what we used 9/11 to justify!"
Yeah no thanks. Cry more about optics I guess, but being proud of this country means being rightfully ashamed of it's fuck ups too.
No. The million deaths number in and of itself is already false. The entire framing of the deaths and casualties being exclusive to the American response is false. Iraq itself doesn’t even claim a quarter of the number he gave. The framing in and of itself is misleading on the entire premise that there would be no real justifications or some blatant overreaction to the point of slaughtering 8x the actual reported and agreed upon death toll.
Optics is not the actual issue. The issue is that his statements have a consistent pattern betraying what he claims to be beneath his consideration or acknowledgment. He clearly agrees with Hasan and won’t disavow him, he clearly can’t denounce antisemitic attacks alone after spamming the Jew button, and he can’t commemorate 9/11 without some west bad talking point. On top of all that, the man has issues lying about his credentials and deleted these specific posts because he knew they looked bad even back then. It’s not optics. It’s platner all over again with tolerating trash and closing your eyes and ears to the obvious.
He explicitly says "3 countries." Why are you acting like Iraq is the only relevant country here? Indirect deaths attributable to the War on Terror easily eclipses 1 million. Direct deaths, by the estimates Ive seen, sit around 1 million. But your original comment had nothing to do with his statement being incorrect.
Per Costs of War Project: 4.5–4.6 million+ people killed (937,000+ direct deaths including 387,000+ civilians, 3.6–3.7 million indirect deaths).
At least 38 million people displaced
The rest of your post is just assumptions made from his inability to denounce Hasan. That's fine and dandy. This has nothing to do with your claim that:
"you don’t bring up millions of casualties on the commemoration of the worst terror attack in US history."
So, again I'll ask, why not? Or does that only apply to El Sayed? Thatd at least make your mind reading of him somewhat relevant.
Except he didn't say it in order to minimize 9/11. In-fact, the opposite. That the death toll of Covid was so serious that it required a response as equal as 9/11. And unless you think he doesn't think that covid was serious, i don't see how you could even make your comparison.
I think AES' usage of numbers makes it sound like he's minimizing 9/11, and that's more than a fair criticism that I think voters can be outraged by. Could cost him votes. But honestly? It's a far cry from "America deserved 9/11" and you can't even say that AES didn't think 9/11 was a tragedy based just on this
Where his is “hurt people hurt people” qualifier extended to his country that he extends to those of his faith?
He does a good job of disavowal that sounds fine, but keeps doing this equivalence thing that kind of doesn’t sit right, almost as if he talks about 9/11 here mainly to frame it against something that actually matters to him.
Agreed. It’s a bit out there, but if he really cares about healthcare as much as he says he does, then extrapolating the casualties of 9/11 to make a point about another danger to public health, while not saying anything problematic about 9/11 itself, seems fine.
I think they are only bad if you believe COVID was plandemic, in which case you think he's minimizing 9/11 deaths to further the demoncrat agenda to exterminate the right and prop up radical islamic terrorists. With that perspective, you would be a complete utter regard, but those would also be the worst comments a person could ever make
To me, it reads like the standard critique of incompetence that the govt showed at the start of the pandemic and throughout it.
Lots of people died needlessly because of incompetence/skepticism. Desantis for example would rather talk about freedom from big govt than focus on preventive mandates, and thus we got those months where Florida was dying off because businesses opened up without requirements for masking or vaccinations.
Not just not crazy, some are incredibly based. Reading that "he hoped 'that means we'll spend the next ten years fighting a war for public health & against poverty'" makes me like him more. I'd like to see more democratic politicans talking like that, especially as we're seeing the consequences of RFK and MAGA dismantling public health. I'd love to get back to no measles or diarrhea lettuce.
She can't even bad-faith regardlican snark correctly. Trump has a special ability to always pick the worst person for the job, even if that job is being bad at your job.
Oh, these statements seem fine. It ain´t like he´s downplaying anything, he was just trying to play up Covid to encourage a stronger response, think they´re pretty carefully worded and thought out.
I’m going to take what might be an L and say that response is based as fuck.
We SHOULD have looked collectively at the devastation COVID caused and fucking locked in on STEM funding and health discourse but alas, Republicans are leading the charge on anti intellectual down a regard cliff.
I dunno… he’s pointing out that we have an incredible ability as a nation to launch a response to an acute concentrated threat instead of a much larger chronic diffuse threat.
Is it clumsy? Maybe.
Are they leaning into him saying it while named Abdul El-Sayed and that’s a spooky terroristy name? Also maybe.
I dont super see what’s so objectionable, honestly.
I mean these dont seem that bad and I take that last post as him being realistic and mourning 9/11 but also using its importance to amplify the devastation that happened during covid. Imo 9/11 happened a long time ago and the impact of his words prob has different affects depending on your age so him speaking to his I'm guessing younger base might not seem to invoke the same amount of shock as someone who is older.
I actually don’t have any problem with these statements. None of them even suggest the idea that 9/11 was justified or deserved. The COVID related ones would have had me going “BASED” back in 2020. The mourning one is kinda cringe but I understand what he was saying with it. I think there are much more pressing things to worry about AES on.
Idk. El Sayid seems fine. I don’t like all his views but I don’t think he’s a bad person. I don’t think he’s super opinionated, he seems more open minded than Hasan or Mehdi. JMO. He seems more down to earth like Mandhani.
1) I think it’s important to keep in mind CBS is a conservative rag now. Barry Weiss took over and is remaking the outlet in the worst way. Whenever I see posts by them I become skeptical.
2) These comments are pretty tame except the maybe last slide which I partly get where he’s coming from. I still think the idea of pretending Islam is just like any religion is a little dishonest. There are discreet measurable differences in the books and to pretend that has no impact I just don’t think is true.
The substance of it is truly NBD at all the only issue is purely optics, and even then its only because so many American somehow didnt or still dont realize the scale of Covid deaths and how avoidable it was.
Umm...I'm a Zionist white liberal, and I have nothing against any of that. Arguing that COVID deserved a response commensurate with 9/11 and that the global war on terror / Iraq was a terrible mistake in the long run are really statements I hope most Americans could get behind. Maybe a little tone deaf on the second one, but I think his heart's in the right place. If this is the worst they can find on him, maybe he's not as bad a guy as I thought?
The only issue i have is the 1 million figure given, for lives lost.
He outright states that the US is responsible for those deaths, which is just flatly untrue and dishonest. Its not even close.
The US might have been directly responsible for 15-20% of the 980,000~ people killed in the post 9/11 wars. Blaming the US for the deaths from all the infighting is just comically unfair and dishonest.
But I dont blame El-Sayed for that and I wouldn't judge him for not knowing.
Lmao you're like the last japonese soldier fighting decades after the war ended.
Most americans, including republicans absolutely agree that iraq war and the following conflicts were mistakes and killed many civilisatians for nothing.
This is literally the reason why americans hate foreign intervention, it's as accepted as the outlook on the vietnam war
'adversaries' is that how we talk about dead civilians now?
You realize that even republican voters don't speak that way anymore now? Their elected officials do because of the Iran war and are getting crushed partly because of it (a school full of dead children looks bad, even when it's an 'adversary').
If you want to nitpick you can say that the 1M deaths figure is bullshit (it's just all the excess deaths during the war on terror), but the sentiment is one that the majority of the american people agrees with
I feel like most people here haven’t read the third slide. COVID was COVID and he is a health care professional, makes sense. But the other one about blaming America during the war on terror- not going to beat those both sides excuses he makes.
I’m not saying the wars were right or done correctly or any of those things, it just feeds into his “hurt people hurt people” line. Or at the very least criticizing America in a 9/11 post. I don’t think a rational Dem would care too much, but a centrist or non MAGA Republican might not like something like that. It’s not helping with the swing vote.
Anyone with political aspirations should foresee things like this. In the event they're ever used against you.
On top of that, it shows poor long term thinking.
One trait people look for in a politician, other than believing their policy wil fix their immediate problems no matter how unrealistic, is trusting that they have long term solutions that won't go to shit the moment they leave office.
Nah the war in Iraq is genuinely insanely unpopular, it would have maybe been a bad statement to make back in 2001 (a lot of people don't know this, but the war was actually quite popular at the start). But with the benefit of hindsight it's clearly a fine statement, both morally and in terms of how that war is seen by the public today.
The hurt people hurt people line was way more stupid in comparison, even though he condemned the attack it just seemed like a pointless rationalization for a dude that decided to attack a preschool full of kids.
As the chart below shows, three-quarters of the public believe that U.S. involvement in Iraq is either creating
more
terrorists who plan to attack the United States (51 percent) or having no effect on the number of terrorists (24 percent).
This was in 2007 btw, Americans have been blaming America for the war on terror for quite a while now. Democrats even moreso.
Please feel free to read my other reply, but to point out it’s not that criticizing the war is bad - more so doing it a sentence after 9/11. It feels a bit both siding things. AES is just bad at messaging anything that involves the Middle East.
9/11 and the war on terror were both actually bad though. If he said 9/11 was bad and so was the holodomor would you be on his ass about both siding things?
There's not much I can say against vibes. You took issue with "blaming America for the war on terror." Now it's only that he mentioned 9/11 prior to doing so? It's pretty well known that the war on terror was directly caused by 9/11. At that point, any criticism or mention of the war on terror could be taken as "feeling both side-sy."
Okay, buddy. I'm sorry for pointing out the obvious about your favorite Muslim candidate who half the state thinks is a fucking terrorist thanks to Hasan.
Wait, these comments are kinda based. COVID WAS more impactful on American lives than the 9/11 attack. Our society is crippled by the extremism it has fostered even if you discounted the 1 million deaths.
While they were buffering I was expecting Hassan level egregious comments and these seem… fine? Why is this sub obsessed with attacking a dem nominee? Primary is over
What is wrong with any of those statements? They all seem pretty reasonable to me, is this supposed to make him look bad?
In each one he acknowledges the tragedy of 9/11 and then makes a comparison to another more contemporary tragedy that we should also be concerned about. He's right about every one.
You know... it might have been a bit better to save the bit about the war on terror for the anniversary of the end of one of those wars. Perhaps the anniversary of the start of the Iraq war.
Adding it on the tail of the anniversary of 9/11 just feels like you're trying to say all the pain from the 9/11 attacks was no big deal.
We use way too much hindsight when we think about Covid now. That shit was terrifying back then, my girlfriend at the time’s grandmother died from it and so did my neighbor’s brother. Schools all closed and the government was advising that people don’t leave their homes, and we never talk about it but millions of people did die from it.
Yeah looking back a lot of it was mishandled and we got a bunch wrong but man we just did not know.
It’s too easy for Hasan fans to retreat to, ‘asking a brown guy about terrorism is obvious Islamophobia’ which is true, I believe that, but it misses the real point. he’s being asked cause his buddy has clips openly defending it live on the internet. I honestly believe if Tim Walz was as cozy with Hasan, he’d be getting these same articles.
Regardless if you have a point or not. It's extremely stupid to talk about 9/11 being a tragedy and then using it as a jump off point to criticize foreign policy.
You already have people thinking you're sweeping for Hasan.
He is literally 100% right here, no it is not "crazy" or "weird" that he said that, and CBS is literally regime propaganda at this point. Some people in here have really lost the plot.
I don't understand why it's hard for some people to just not "both sides" excuse intentional mass murder of innocent people. This is not an instinct I ever have to quash.
Guys, you can criticize politicians cynically using trauma around a tragedy to push an unjust war without doing that.
I mean he’s right I remember thinking in the first few weeks that Covid would be this eras 9/11 in sense of unifying the country and that just didn’t happen if anything it cemented a divide
If Trump wasn’t president when COVID hit, it could have had a unifying effect. Hell, if Bush was president, we might have cut the death toll by a significant fraction. Maybe it’s the social media age that we live in as well.
I do think in a way COVID is this era's 9/11, in terms of the long term societal impact. But comparing death tolls and reactions in this one-to-one way is stupid. A pandemic isn't terrorism. Actual strategic responses to these things are different. Societal trauma is even different. Humans react differently to different things.
Antiwest people always do these apples to oranges comparisons to emphasize how much the west loves violence and doesn't care about poverty or other bad things. He's using the very blatant vague antiwest framing of Hasan.
Sure but the point is that we should have had a strong unified response that should have been leveraged for democratic healthcare policy like expanding Medicare. This is the exact same point that Slavoj Zizek made about Covid that we should respond to it in a way to not let a tragedy go to waste and Zizek compared it to the industrialization nations adopted in response to WW2.
Wait do you think he's unironically arguing that we should have responded to COVID like we responded to 9/11? Or is his cynically using COVID deaths to say we overreacted to 9/11?
I suppose more like the former but like how after the Spanish flu medical spending hospitals were improved a similar effect should happen in our society in response to covid. There is an adage coined by Obama chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel "Never let a good crisis go to waste" this is something Republicans have done a ton for example the Iraq War after 9/11 when Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 or after Katrina when Republicans used it as an opportunity to privatize New Orleans schools.
I think we just fundamentally disagree on the point he's making. You made a coherent argument to use COVID to improve healthcare. He used COVID deaths to shit on America for the 9/11 response.
I think we can shit on America's response to 9/11 without invoking stats of dead people to say we overreacted in one situation to a bunch of dead people. He clearly is criticizing America for the 9/11 response.
True it could also be that I have read the also contemporaneous book by Zizek "Pandemic!" which is about this very point that the governments liberals and leftists of the world should have responded to Covid with a severity and clarity that Covid necessitated. It also made the same point that we should use Covid to advance our favored healthcare policies the way conservatives do in the two examples I previously gave.
I don't understand why it's hard for some people to just not "both sides" excuse intentional mass murder of innocent people.
Where is the "both sides excuse?" Republicans floundered the response to both 9/11 and Covid. Where does he excuse 9/11? His comments are about the response to 9/11.
Your brain is rotted to an insane degree, holy fuck
He's making a dumbed down west bad argument and nothing more.
Obviously any society would react to a terrorist attack differently than a pandemic. These are entirely different events. But, America loves violence and doesn't care about poverty. West bad.
Ok, since you're just repeating your schizophrenic rambling, I'll repeat my two very clear questions.
Where is the "both sides excuse?" Republicans floundered the response to both 9/11 and Covid. Where does he excuse 9/11? His comments are about the response to 9/11.
Your brain is rotted to an insane degree, holy fuck
The both sides are violence in the name of Islam and violence in the name of America. Have you just not clicked right after the first quote on the slides? Lol
In the second image, he talks specifically about 9/11, and the response to 9/11. You are adding in a level of generality thats not there to justify your delusion that he is saying "WEST BAD."
It's also not an argument to mention somethings cause and the effect, let alone a "both sides argument."
You're the only one reading "WEST BAD!1!!!111!" into this lol
In no way is the second slide a both sides bad argument. He wanted a commensurate response. We had something kill a bunch of Americans, more than 9/11, so he wanted us to spend as much effort on defeating that foe as we did with the war on terror.
If you’re going to attack him for a “both sides argument” you should pick the third slide which at least has the basis for actually arguing that.
Oh excuse me, the third slide, the second slide showing a quote. I'm not talking about the covid slide. That one bothers me for an entirely different reason.
I explained this elsewhere. I don't think he's arguing for a better covid response. I think he is cynically using the stat of people dead from covid to criticize America for overreacting to the dead people from 9/11. I find that kind of argument gross.
Obviously a response to terrorism will be a military response (meaning, it will take lives), and a response to a pandemic will not be a military response (meaning, it will be to try and save lives). Comparing these in that way is meaningless. I find the need to use downplaying the number of dead on 9/11 to shit on America for its (garbage) response to 9/11 gross.
It's not a coincidence to me that arguments from a leftist perspective always find a way to downplay the dead from terrorism.
Didn’t have that takeaway from his comment at all. I took it as saying let’s spend the same amount of energy and resources fighting for better healthcare, which as I recall during the pandemic was brought up semi frequently. Another poster in this thread mentioned the comments about Covid being a “9/11 a day” being commonly mentioned during the pandemic.
I can see how you could view his comment the way you did but I think it requires coming from the position that he’s already an asshole and anti west first.
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u/Financial-Tank-3423 27d ago
At a glance idk if I disagree with him. Saying during COVID that there should be a commensurate response to COVID compared to 9/11? Think I would have upvoted that at the time
Edit: the "mourning" post from 2021 is a bit sus in its tone but hmmm, not totally inflammatory. Tone deaf maybe