EXCERPT:
OMAR: "People like Elliott Abrams, neocons and warmongers, you know, for so long have pushed for policies that are now — we can see, not only in Central America, but many parts of the world, the kind of devastations that they’ve had for decades. I could not pass up the opportunity to not only remind the American people that this was someone who was convicted of lying to Congress, but also someone who had a heavy hand in some of the most devastating policies that we imposed on Central America, and that there is a direct correlation between the kind of mass migration that we’re noticing right now from Central America and South America to this country. I think, for so long, we’ve used muscle memory to sort of generate our foreign policy. And it’s about time, like Professor Sachs said, that we pause and we look at the kind of implications that our policies have, what our ultimate goal is, what is being successful, and what are some policies that we should do away with. I remember talking to Madam Secretary Albright and talking to her about the success of sanctions we impose around the world and how some of them have devastating effects on the actual population and not on the governments that we see as our adversaries. And she concurred with me that many of the sanctions that we impose ultimately lead to devastations — and we are seeing it now in Venezuela — and ultimately lead to having severe problems in that country, which doesn’t stabilize life for the people, and certainly puts us here in the United States at risk."