Omar tweets clip of anti-war George Carlin routine

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) tweeted a clip of legendary stand-up comedian George Carlin criticizing American foreign policy in the Middle East as tensions ramp up now between the U.S. and Iran.

“It’s no laughing matter,” Omar added in her post on Monday.

In the clip, pulled from a 1992 HBO special, Carlin declares “bombing brown people” the nation’s “hobby” in the wake of the first Gulf War.

It’s no laughing matter pic.twitter.com/HNDmm2Q627

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) January 6, 2020

Carlin, who died in 2008, says in the clip that the U.S. “can’t build a decent car, can’t make a TV set or a VCR worth a f—, got no steel industry left, can’t educate our young people, can’t get health care to our old people, but we can bomb the s— out of your country, all right! Huh? Especially if your country is full of brown people. Oh, we like that, don’t we?”

On Sunday, Omar joined Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), the only member of Congress to vote against the 2001 authorization of military force in Afghanistan, to introduce a resolution prohibiting the executive branch from taking any military action against Iran without congressional approval.

“We in Congress must exercise our Constitutional duty—and do everything in our power to stop another disastrous war,” Omar, a first-term progressive representative who came to the U.S. as a child as a Somali refugee, said in a statement. “Following the assassination [of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani,] thousands of additional troops were sent to the Middle East in one of the largest rapid deployments seen in decades. This follows years of saber-rattling and threats of war against Iran by President Trump and his accomplices.”

Soleimani was killed in a U.S. drone strike last Friday, prompting a nonbinding vote in the Iraqi Parliament to expel U.S. forces as well as threats of retaliation from Iranian officials. President Trump has repeatedly threatened to target sites of cultural significance to Iranians if Tehran strikes back.