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“If she makes it into the
second round, Gabbard could become the catalyst for the kind of globalist vs.
nationalist debate that broke out between Trump and Bush Republicans in 2016, a
debate that contributed to Trump’s victory…”
“For too
long our leaders have failed us, taking us into one regime change war after the
next, leading us into a new Cold War and arms race, costing us trillions of our
hard-earned tax payer dollars and countless lives. This insanity must end.”
Donald
Trump, circa 2016?
Nope. That
denunciation of John Bolton interventionism came from Congresswoman Tulsi
Gabbard of Hawaii during Wednesday night’s Democratic debate. At 38, she was
the youngest candidate on stage.
Gabbard
proceeded to rip both the “president and his chickenhawk cabinet (who) have led
us to the brink of war with Iran.”
In a fiery
exchange, Congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio countered that America cannot disengage
from Afghanistan: “When we weren’t in there they started flying planes into our
buildings.”
“The
Taliban didn’t attack us on 9/11,” Gabbard replied, “Al-Qaida attacked us on
9/11. That’s why I and so many other people joined the military, to go after
al-Qaida, not the Taliban.”
When Ryan
insisted we must stay engaged, Gabbard shot back:
“Is that
what you will tell the parents of those two soldiers who were just killed in
Afghanistan? ‘Well, we just have to be engaged.’ As a solider, I will tell you,
that answer is unacceptable. … We are no better off in Afghanistan that we were
when this war began.”
By
debate’s end, Gabbard was the runaway winner in both the Drudge Report and
Washington Examiner polls and was far in front among all the Democratic
candidates whose names were being searched on Google.
Though
given less than seven minutes of speaking time in a two-hour debate, she could
not have used that time more effectively. And her performance may shake up the
Democratic race.
If she can
rise a few points above her 1-2% in the polls, she could be assured a spot in
the second round of debates.
If she is,
moderators will now go to her with questions of foreign policy issues that
would not have been raised without her presence, and these questions will
expose the hidden divisions in the Democratic Party.
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Leading
Democratic candidates could be asked to declare what U.S. policy should be —
not only toward Afghanistan but Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jared
Kushner’s “Deal of the Century,” and Trump’s seeming rejection of the two-state
solution.
If she
makes it into the second round, Gabbard could become the catalyst for the kind
of globalist vs. nationalist debate that broke out between Trump and Bush
Republicans in 2016, a debate that contributed to Trump’s victory at the
Cleveland convention and in November.
The
problem Gabbard presents for Democrats is that, as was shown in the joust with
Ryan, she takes positions that split her party, while her rivals prefer to talk
about what unites the party, like the terribleness of Trump, free college
tuition and soaking the rich.
Given more
airtime, she will present problems for the GOP as well. For the foreign policy
Tulsi Gabbard is calling for is not far off from the foreign policy Donald
Trump promised in 2016 but has since failed to deliver.
We still
have 2,000 troops in Syria, 5,000 in Iraq, 14,000 in Afghanistan. We just moved
an aircraft carrier task force, B-52s and 1,000 troops to the Persian Gulf to
confront Iran. We are about to impose sanctions on the Iranian foreign minister
with whom we would need to negotiate to avoid a war.
Jared
Kushner is talking up a U.S.-led consortium to raise $50 billion for the
Palestinians in return for their forfeiture of sovereignty and an end to their
dream of a nation-state on the West Bank and Gaza with Jerusalem as its capital.
John
Bolton is talking of regime change in Caracas and confronting the “troika of
tyranny” in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
Rather
than engaging Russia as Trump promised, we have been sanctioning Russia, arming
Ukraine, sending warships into the Black Sea, beefing up NATO in the Baltic and
trashing arms control treaties Ronald Reagan and other presidents negotiated in
the Cold War
U.S.
policy has managed to push our great adversaries, Russia and China, together as
they have not been since the first Stalin-Mao decade of the Cold War.
This June,
Vladimir Putin traveled to Beijing where he and Xi Jinping met in the Great
Hall of the People to warn that in this time of “growing global instability and
uncertainty,” Russia and China will “deepen their consultations on strategic
stability issues.”
Xi
presented Putin with China’s new Friendship Medal. Putin responded:
“Cooperation with China is one of Russia’s top priorities and it has reached an
unprecedented level.”
At the end
of the Cold War, we were the lone superpower. Who forfeited our preeminence?
Who bled us of 7,000 U.S. lives and $6 trillion in endless Middle East wars?
Who got us into this Cold War II?
Was all
this the doing of those damnable isolationists again?
