Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went to the Munich Security Conference to introduce herself to the world as a foreign policy thinker. She returned having demonstrated something else entirely: that the Democratic Party’s progressive star has absorbed the establishment's worst ideas while shedding only its least popular rhetoric.
To be fair to AOC, some credit is due. On Gaza, she said something obvious: Unconditional American aid to Israel enabled massive civilian death. She even referred to Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide.”
Further, echoing the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Davos speech, she expressed skepticism about the “rules-based order” fiction. “The rules for whom?” she rightly asked, pointing to the obvious hypocrisy of those “rules” being broken at will by those who have enough power to do so without consequence.
The attacks came immediately, and they were predictable. Democratic Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), who has made Israel's defense his signature issue, called AOC’s alignment with pro-Palestinian voices “a rot in my party.” Fox News ran segments on her “shocking ignorance.” Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a neoconservative hawk, dismissed her as a “media-driven celebrity” whose comments “expose shallow and deeply flawed thinking.”
But here’s the thing: When Fetterman, Dubowitz, and Fox all attack you, you might actually be onto something. These are not good-faith critics. They are the foreign policy establishment’s attack dogs, and their howling is not a sign of error—it is a sign that AOC touched a nerve. In a party whose senior leadership still largely gives Israel the benefit of the doubt, AOC deserves credit for speaking plainly.
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