El-Sayed blasted killing of Al-Qaeda terrorist US citizen in resurfaced article

WASHINGTON — Michigan Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed once ripped into former President Barack Obama’s drone strike against a US citizen believed to be an al-Qaeda leader and had a dramatic warning for the Muslim Brotherhood, resurfaced articles show.In a 2011 HuffPost piece trashing potential budget cuts, El-Sayed complained lawmakers seemed to be working harder to prevent cuts to the Pentagon than on social programs, while highlighting concerns about the wars in the Middle East.“Beyond the decade-long slog that’s claimed hundreds of thousands of lives — Afghan and American — in Afghanistan, our military carries out daily drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, he wrote in the piece.“Most recently, in fact, one of these drone strikes perpetrated the extrajudicial assassination of an American citizen.Soon after, another was ordered to murder his son, 16, also an American.

Not to mention our misguided, unfounded, and tremendously damaging war in Iraq.”Earlier that year, Obama had authorized a drone strike to kill Anwar Nasser Abdulla al-Awlaki, a key organizer for al-Qaeda, who had dual citizenship with Yemen and the US.He was the first US citizen deliberately killed in a drone strike by the government.In another resurfaced piece, El-Sayed fretted that the Muslim Brotherhood and another Islamist party that took power after the 2011 Egyptian revolution might embrace radical socialist policies.Following the resignation of Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak in 2011, El-Sayed penned multiple opinion pieces backing the protesters who swept the country and strategizing on how Egypt could retain democracy.In a February 2012 Al Jazeera article co-authored with then-Harvard University economics PhD student Jisung Park, he warned that Egypt’s future would depend on its economic choices.

“Impressive showings at the polls by both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Al-Nour Salafist party – both of Egypt’s Islamic parties – was likely more a product of their domestic ...