As part of her post-announcement media tour, Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard recently appeared on Morning Joe.
The panel spends most of the interview questioning Gabbard about the President of Syria (she opposed regime change). The questions were oddly out of context (You could almost forget that the CIA and Pentagon-backed war to unseat Assad has been a very bloody failure). But this was not a policy discussion — this was a take-down.
We’ve seen this all before… The whole tone of the interview was: Just how can you be ok with Assad’s monstrous crimes against humanity? It’s all reminiscent of what the press did to opponents of the Iraq War — try to associate them with Saddam’s tyranny. For anti-war voters, it was a telling interview, with several implications…
“Liberal” Press This is a good reminder that even the so-called “liberal” MSNBC has its employees read off of talking points distributed by the corporate beltway establishment. Phil Donahue was the rare employee to resist this, which caused MSNBC to fire him in 2003. Usually the establishment is more subtle in their crafting of the narrative. For example, they will let Fox News take on the more ardently jingoistic approach… but let’s not forget that the entire media establishment is singing off of the same sheet of music.
A Real Anti-War Candidate? In the Democratic primary, all of the candidates are going to sound great. They know which way the political winds are blowing. But even assuming their views are genuine, that does not necessarily translate into policy. I suspect that Obama’s campaign reflected his genuine instincts on national security, but those instincts put him at odds with the national security establishment. And because he was so hesitant to spend political capital on this, we ended up with wildly inconsistent policy — such as fighting proxy wars against Iran (Syria and Yemen), even as we tried to sow the seeds for peace. The establishment is treating Tulsi Gabbard very differently than Obama, which suggests that they know she will act according to her convictions. As an anti-war voter, I am very encouraged to see this.
National Security, Not Profit Gabbard is no pacifist. She supported military action against ISIS. As a Major in the National Guard, Gabbard has been deployed to the middle east. She opposes regime change in Syria, because it does not serve our national security interests. Regime change does serve certain business interests and the sectarian interests of our Sunni allies in the region. That is why the Morning Joe panel wanted to discuss Assad’s atrocities, rather than our national security interests.
Establishment Attacks Help Democratic Nominee The narrative in 2020 is likely to be: Trump vs. The Establishment. That narrative gives Trump the advantage. Democrats can effectively undercut this by nominating a candidate with comparable anti-establishment bona fides. If I am Tulsi Gabbard, I would be hoping for many MORE interviews like her Morning Joe appearance. There is a real thirst for a President who will represent the people, not the powerful.
From what I’ve been reading Gabbard does seem a bit too forgiving of Assad.
She says Assad is a bad guy. Of course, that’s not what was put in the headline, which reads: “Rep. Gabbard: Assad is not an enemy of the US”
Now that we have supported anti-Assad Sunni militants in their civil war, I don’t think anyone would be surprised if Assad (and affiliated Shia terrorists) have become our enemy. Let’s hope that is not the case.
You seem to be putting the cart before the horse. Assad was a bad guy before he became our direct enemy, which is why we reacted how we did. Anybody who does what he has done should be presumed the enemy of any country that values human rights.
Hmm.
Saddam Hussein was also a bad guy. He gassed his own people, his record on human rights was abysmal. He was also secular and Iraq under his regime was a regional bulwark against Iranian expansion.
When we took out Saddam Hussein, we destablized the entire Middle East and created ISIS. The world-wide refuge crisis is a direct consequence of that.
As bad as Saddam Hussein was for human rights, I think our 2003 invasion has caused more human rights abuses against more victims than if we had left Iraq alone.
I think we need a more nuanced foreign policy than these exchanges about Assad presuppose.
The most stable outcome in Syria is likely to involve the Russians replacing Assad with another Russian puppet who is still a Russian puppet but is less egregiously savage than Assad. That may well be a better outcome in Syria than anything we might accomplish with our usual ham-handedness.
Our regime changes in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and South America have not gone well.
We have a tendency to step in it when it comes to picking sides and we too often choose our interests over our values (though I would argue that being true to the latter really does encompass the former anyway). We should consistently advocate and show we are willing to live with free and fair elections, and if that results in less oil for us so be it. Many of the people in that part of the world don’t “hate us for our freedom” as some would have us believe. They hate us for our inconsistency and hypocrisy in that regard. My ideal foreign policy would include Wilson-esque and Carter-esque elements.
They hate us for our support of Israel. They hate us for the corrupt regimes we keep in power. They hate us for the torrents of their blood that have flowed as a consequence of our actions for generations.
The CIA began its gun supply and training program before the gas attack. The Assad regime has always been bad, but that does not explain why we oppose him, while supporting the equally bad Saudi regime. We oppose Assad because he is allied to Iran and Russia. We support the Saudi’s, and their “moderate” Sunni militants, because they are allied to us.
Our involvement in Syria’s civil war has nothing to do with human rights.
More specifically, we support the Saudis because they ensure our access to oil in the Middle East.
It’s all about oil.
According to Trump, we also need the Saudi Kingdom to keep buying our weapons.
Keeping the oil markets from crashing is a valid concern, but increasingly less so thanks to shale oil. And our longstanding commitment to protecting Persian Gulf shipping has never been a valid justification for jumping down the sectarian rabbit hole.
Part of the problem may be that the foreign policy establishment is just too powerful and unwieldy for the President alone to steer it. This is where public opinion can come into play and it is beginning to budge beltway opinion on Saudi Arabia (it only took the literal dismemberment of one of their own for the Press to rethink things).
We need the Saudi’s to help keep our repressive regimes in power. If actual representative democracy were to break out in the Middle East, so that the governments of the region reflected the actual will of the people in the region, two things would happen within days:
1. Israel would be destroyed.
2. America and American interests would be expelled from the region (picture the situation in Iran about two weeks after the Shah was removed).
I’m not sure that oil markets would crash. I think it’s likely that American assets would be nationalized or otherwise seized and the price of Middle East petroleum for Americans would skyrocket.
It appears to me that these two outcomes will ultimately happen anyway, because neither is sustainable in the long run (where “long” is measured in decades or generations). The enmity between Israel and its neighbors inexorably increases as Israeli leadership moves rightward. The hostility towards America and American interests — especially American petroleum interests — inexorably increases as our fundamental contempt for the region increases (the Muslim world has the dubious distinction of being the one group even more hated and feared by mainstream Americans than “Illegals”).
I think that one of the important reasons why the Green New Deal is so important is because it is the first real attempt to move America beyond the exploitative petroleum policies of the past century. That is also one of the important reasons why it will be so passionately opposed by mainstream Americans.
I’m willing to risk your #2. I don’t think we would allow #1 to happen.
I don’t like that we kowtow to SA either, but I’m not aware of them gassing their own citizens.
Again, the CIA began its support for the war before the gas attacks even happened. Our opposition to Assad has nothing to do with national security or human rights.
Once you dismember your own citizens with a bone saw, whether you also gas them is kind of a moot point.
Saudi Arabia was arguably more responsible for the 9/11 attacks than Afghanistan, Iraq, or any of the other places we targeted. In addition to OBL’s obvious ties to the Saudis, there were numerous other connections reported in mainstream responsible publications such as the New York Times (emphasis mine):
The Saudi royal family has been funding terror worldwide for decades. Their fingerprints were all over the 9/11 attacks.
The financial and business ties between the Saudi royal family and the Bush family were deep, pervasive and well documented.
Similarly, deep ties continue to exist between the Saudi royal family and Halliburton, the family business of former Vice President and unindicted war criminal Richard Cheney.
Your standard (“but they didn’t gas their own citizens”) is irrelevant to accurately understanding our participation in the Middle East and our continued support for the Saudis.
Our own moderate Syrian militants were allied to Al-Qaeda. It’s not hard to imagine what Syria would have looked like post-Assad.
Our failed Syrian policy is nicely summarized by Jeffrey Sachs in this 2018 appearance on Morning Joe. The panel interviewing Tulsi Gabbard is not as ignorant as they pretend to be. Rather, they are reading from talking points prepared by the same “Permanent State” mentioned by Jeffrey Sachs. They will dutifully target any Presidential candidate who opposes America’s use of war as an instrument for regime change.
Voters know they are being manipulated. They know they are being fed propaganda, to advance the interests of the powerful. The right-wing distrust in mainstream institutions also exists on the center and the left of the political spectrum. The more Tulsi Gabbard is targeted by the press, the more likely she is to explode in popularity (as we saw with Trump). For this reason, we may just see her getting ignored by the press.
There is no “liberal media” on economic matters. It’s all corporate, even NPR to a degree unless it’s running a BBC program.
Yep, there is a reason it’s called “Washington Consensus” economics…. and the consensus is even closer on national security issues. The press is with the establishment, not the people.
Liberal policies — medicare for all, no Syrian regime change — are overwhelmingly popular with Americans. But the establishment press will frame the issues, to make these commonly-held opinions seem either far left or anti-American. Supporting a candidate like Tulsi Gabbard is the only way to break through this.
I haven’t watched the interview, but did he ask about her off-the-cuff, entirely unprepared announcement that she was running for president? Or her extended anti-LGBTQ history? Or does she say “oops sorry” and we’re supposed to forget about that, too?
As Congresswoman, she has a good record on LGBTQ issues. Her prior evolution on social issues is rather unique. Her father was a very conservative Catholic State Senator and a SoCon leader in her state. Tulsi’s social views changed dramatically after deploying to Iraq and Kuwait. She has talked about how the Mideast deployment exposed her to radical misogyny. During this time, her marriage also fell apart. I’ve known people who have had similar changes of heart after having such big life experiences. So it sounded genuine to me.