Although the first uses of the word “allegiance” are from Medieval times, and refer to “the obligation of a feudal vassal to his liege lord,” the word’s use has become broad in the succeeding centuries. Political ideas and political parties often expect allegiance from their members. Allegiance can be pragmatic, and as alliances come and go, allegiances often change with the makeup of those alliances.
Because we ”pledge allegiance” to our flag often and somewhat ritually, the most common use of that term in our culture is directly associated with “the fidelity owed by a subject or citizen to a sovereign or government.”
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar has recently used the term “allegiance” to help illustrate how she views the relationships of some of her colleagues in elected office to Israel. There is much truth to this and other observations she has made about the so-called US-Israel alliance. But even some of her supporters are writing and saying she might have chosen her words better.
I question those of us who come from backgrounds far different from that of a female war refugee of color, who has had to fight many kinds of discrimination just about every day of her life, to make a sincere attempt to try to see our country from her viewpoint as best we might.
In an interview last week, Rep. Omar spoke to the importance of someone from her background being a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. She was referring in part to her questioning of genocide enabler, Elliot Abrams:
I’m someone who represents many identities that have constantly been debated in that committee. And for the first time, I actually get to sit on that committee. For many years, I’ve spent time screaming at the TV asking questions and wishing someone on that committee would hold people accountable for the actions that they have been part of that has caused so much harm around the world. And when I had my opportunity, I wasn’t going to let it go to waste.
Last week’s denigration of Rep. Omar in a poster, displayed at a GOP-sponsored event inside the West Virginia capitol building, though making national headlines, is the sort of thing she has had to endure on a weekly or even daily basis. Yet this sleazy poster, which has gotten a weekend over which its hateful content might have been contextualized, didn’t warrant a congressional response at the start of a new week in Congress. Instead, she is now the subject of a move by her colleagues to marginalize her for somewhat ineptly speaking truth to power regarding the unnatural nature of how Congress treats the intrusive political power of a foreign country.