Rep. Gabbard: U.S. Must Work with Russia in Syria

In a Sept. 30 interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), a veteran of the Afghanistan war, firmly stated that it were best for “cool heads” to prevail, in looking at the Russian intervention in Syria. The United States, she said, should work with Russia, and keep its “strategic goal” clearly in mind. The enemy is ISIL, Jabat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda. The U.S. shouldn’t get distracted by talking about “regime change or nation-building.” Overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad would not only be a mistake, she said, but would harm U.S. national security interests.

When Blitzer attempted to refute Gabbard by repeating the laundry list of Assad’s alleged crimes, and “slaughter of his own people,” Gabbard retorted that much of what is said about al-Assad today, was also said about Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi, who were overthrown by the U.S. Look at the state of those nations today, she told Blitzer, who could only mumble, “you’ve got a point.” The U.S. has to learn the lessons of the past, Gabbard underscored, and not go blindly rushing in to effect regime change, without asking “what comes next?”

In the second part of the interview, Gabbard pointed to the U.S.’s alliance with Soviet leader Stalin during the Second World War, to achieve their common objective, the defeat of Hitler and Nazism. The U.S. had to put aside objections it had to Stalin’s domestic policy, to ensure success in defeating fascism, she added. Otherwise, “we’d be living in a very different world today.” She reiterated that the U.S. must learn from history, not only from the World War II example, but also from more recent history “when we got into the regime-change and nation-building business,” which only produced chaos in its wake.

In a tweet put out yesterday, Gabbard wrote, “bad enough that the U.S. hasn’t been bombing al-Qaeda/al Nusra in Syria, but it’s mind-boggling that we protest Russia’s bombing of those terrorists…. Al Qaeda bombed us on 9/11, and must be defeated. Obama won’t bomb them in Syria. Putin did.”