On March 4, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted her disagreement with the United States’ involvement in Afghanistan. AOC goes on to comment that she believes an option in response to 9/11 would have been “non-intervention.”

“All of Congress was wrong”

According to AOC, the decision to enter into a war in Afghanistan was wrong. CNN anchor Jake Tapper responds:

This type of revisionist review of the war in Afghanistan is dangerous and shameful. Nearly 3,000 Americans were killed by al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001. The United States was thrust into a fight it did not ask for. It’s acceptable to question decisions made over the last 17+ years in the Afghanistan war that led to it becoming the longest war in American history, but the position that better initial options included “targeting the network itself, limited engagement, non-intervention,” is lunacy.

In these options, she advocates for either, attacking the group of terrorists while leaving the Taliban government in power that harbored them, or not intervening in response to deadly attacks on American soil.

Not to mention, America did attempt a variation of limited engagement and targeting the network itself. In 2001, President George W. Bush gave the Taliban the option to turn over Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders or share in their fate. The Taliban refused, and in response the United States, after Congress passed the Authorization of Military Force against Terrorists (AUMF), intervened to destroy al-Qaeda and overthrow the Taliban regime responsible for giving safe haven to the terrorists.

Granted by Article 1 of the Constitution, Congress has the power to declare war. In light of AOC’s ahistorical views on our involvement in Afghanistan, the American people are lucky she was not a member of Congress following the deadliest attack on American soil.