Tulsi Gabbard Is Not Anti-War by Carolina Orr

Tulsi Gabbard Is Not Anti-War
She’s a nationalist, hiding behind a mask of anti-interventionism

Caroline Orr
Feb 16

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) launched her 2020 presidential campaign last month and wasted no time positioning herself as the “anti-war” candidate running on a platform centered around “the issue of war and peace.”

Since she announced her candidacy, Gabbard has appeared regularly on television to cycle through her talking points, many of which sound strikingly familiar to those Trump offered up on the campaign trail in 2016. Her foreign policy stance clearly resonated with a core group of true believers, who regularly take to social media to champion the congresswoman and tout her so-called “peace campaign.”

But despite what she and her supporters claim, Gabbard is not an “anti-war candidate.”

She’s not opposed to war; she’s opposed to U.S. involvement in some wars — even if that means doing nothing to help civilians who are being slaughtered by war criminals. She has accepted huge sums of money from the defense industry, expressed support for increasing the use of drone strikes, and hinted that she would consider using torture if she thought it was necessary. And like Trump, she believes in putting “America first,” regardless of the global consequences.

She isn’t “anti-war” — she’s a nationalist, hiding behind a mask of anti-interventionism.

Gabbard has situated herself as a peace advocate who isn’t afraid to stand up to the voices calling for “endless war” — but a look at her own record reveals that she has personally benefited from those who stand to gain the most from war.

As Akbar Ahmed recently reported for HuffPost, Gabbard has accepted hefty donations from arms dealers like Lockheed Martin and Boeing, both of which ranked among the congresswoman’s top donors in the 2016 cycle. The defense industry was her third-largest source of funding during the same cycle, accounting for nearly 14 percent of total contributions to her campaign.

In May 2017, Gabbard announced on her website that she had recently stopped accepting money from several industries, including the defense sector — but by that point, she had already pocketed over $115,000 from arms dealers in just her first four years in Congress.

“Regular contributions from companies including Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and BAE Systems poured in between 2012 (the year she was first elected) and 2016,” HuffPost reported.

The relationship isn’t unidirectional, either. In one of her first acts as a congresswoman, Gabbard broke with the Democratic Party to support a GOP funding bill because, as she explained at the time, “it provides important funds for our men and women serving overseas [and] our military-related jobs in Hawaii.”

She has stated on numerous occasions that she supports expanding the use of drone strikes against military opponents, and, in 2014, refused to rule out the idea of using torture on suspected terrorists. Gabbard also spoke out vehemently against the Iran nuclear deal when it was first proposed by President Obama.

Her hawkish foreign policy stance has earned praise from Republicans and placed her in the company of neoconservative figures like Dick Cheney and and Bill Kristol. The associations aren’t by happenstance—she’s been invited to events held by right-wing think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and frequently appears on right-wing news networks like Fox News.

In a 2016 interview, Gabbard told the Hawaii Tribune-Herald that “when it comes to the war against terrorists, I’m a hawk.”

This is how she justifies her support for military operations like Russia’s years-long bombing campaign in Syria. Unlike the U.S., Russia has aligned itself with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose violent crackdown on civilian protesters in the spring of 2011 led to the war that is still raging today.

In addition to direct military involvement, the Kremlin has also backed the Assad regime by selling and delivering arms, withholding humanitarian aid from civilians, blocking international efforts to sanction Assad for crimes against humanity, and — perhaps most influentially — carrying out a propaganda blitz aimed at changing the way the world sees the conflict in Syria.

When Russia launched its brutal bombing campaign on September 30, 2015, Gabbard tweeted her support for the bloody offensive, writing: “Bad enough U.S. has not been bombing al-Qaeda/al-Nusra in Syria. But it’s mind-boggling that we protest Russia’s bombing of these terrorists.”

She followed up the next day with a tweet condemning President Obama and praising Putin: “Al-Qaeda attacked us on 9/11 and must be defeated. Obama won’t bomb them in Syria. Putin did.”

But Putin wasn’t just bombing terrorists. In fact, Russian forces were actively engaged in war crimes in Syria when Gabbard praised the bombing campaign. Furthermore, most of Russia’s airstrikes targeted opposition groups, including many U.S.-backed fighters. This provided a convenient way for Putin to prop up the Assad regime under the guise of fighting terrorism.

And despite what Gabbard asserted, U.S. forces had conducted countless airstrikes against al-Qaeda/al-Nusra targets at that point — just not as indiscriminately as Russia.

Russia’s involvement severely worsened the already-devastating situation in Syria. Since the first Russian combat operation began in September 2015, Putin has overseen continuing assaults that have deliberately targeted civilian populations and facilities including hospitals, schools, and markets — a violation of international law that ultimately resulted in Russia losing its seat at the UN Human Rights Council in October 2016. Russia’s airstrikes are also responsible for a 34 percent increase in civilian casualties, according to an October 2018 Airwaves report.

As Russian and Syrian forces continued their bombing campaign in opposition-held regions of the country in November 2015, Gabbard voted with Republicans in favor of legislation to make it nearly impossible for Syrian refugees to come to the United States. The next day, she introduced a bill to prohibit the United States from providing assistance to opposition groups in Syria.

No matter how many civilians died, and regardless of how horrific their deaths were, Gabbard continued to support both Assad and the Russian forces propping him up, while at the same time turning her back on those in need of help.

Gabbard’s reprehensible alliance with Assad reached a new level in January 2017, when she traveled to Damascus to personally visit with him— “something other American officials had not done since Mr. Assad’s use of chemical weapons against civilians became widely known,” the New York Times noted.

The trip, which has been widely criticized since it became public knowledge, was facilitated by the Assad regime and funded by an anti-Semitic political group that stands accused of violence and terrorist associations. Some legal experts say the visit may have violated the Logan Act, while fellow Iraq veteran Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) called the meeting “disgusting” and said Gabbard had “legitimized [Assad’s] dictatorship and in turn, legitimized his genocide against the Syrian people.”

Gabbard, however, won’t even admit that Assad is responsible for the atrocities in Syria.

She may not even view Assad’s actions as wrong.

Upon returning from her trip, Gabbard ratcheted up her support for the dictator and doubled-down on her opposition to America’s involvement in the conflict, which the congresswoman refers to as “regime change.” She also brought back an earful of propaganda, which she promptly distributed to the American public as soon as she got home.

Among other things, Gabbard accused the U.S. of funding and arming al-Qaeda and ISIS, and claimed that moderate rebels don’t even exist. “Neither is true, but both match the talking points that the Assad regime has been pushing for the entirety of the war,” the Washington Post’s Josh Rogin reported in 2017.

This is consistent with her views on terrorism, which she blames on “Islamic extremism”— a term that she says is necessary to use in order to “clearly identify our enemies.”

Gabbard sees the war in Syria as a war on terrorism, even though the conflict was sparked by the violent crackdown of a murderous dictator trying to quash a non-violent uprising.

Of course, if Gabbard acknowledged that the Syrian civil war was a product of the regime’s attempt to stifle dissent, she would also have to acknowledge that Syrians themselves were the ones pushing for regime change, and that Assad’s legitimacy as a leader is as questionable as her so-called “anti-war” stance. And if she acknowledged that, she would have to admit that the presence of U.S. troops is just as legitimate as Russia’s presence — and that the bombing campaign she supports is not a war on terror, but a war of terror.

But Gabbard won’t admit any of that, and as long as her supporters don’t press her on it, it’s doubtful that she ever will.

And why would she?

She already knows that her true believers have bought into the mythology so fully that they see an “anti-war” candidate in the reflection of a congresswoman who likes drone strikes, maybe-likes torture, and definitely-likes war criminals.

Caroline Orr
Feminist. Behavioral Scientist. Freelancer. I study disinformation, psychological warfare, & the extremes of human behavior. Then I write about it for you.