Tulsi Gabbard’s distorted vision of American foreign policy

OPINION:

In January 2017, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Hawaii Democrat, introduced legislation aimed to “prohibit the use of United States Government funds to provide assistance to Al Qaeda, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, and the Islamic State.” If there were any doubt as to whether the congresswoman believed the United States was arming said terrorists, the bill’s name: the “Stop Arming Terrorists Act” appears to settle the question.

Since Ms. Gabbard announced her intention to run for president last week, she has received a large amount of criticism for past homophobia, Islamophobia and coziness with dictators. Less discussed, however has been her consistently distorted vision of American foreign policy, which suggests a radical distrust of America’s role in the world.

In the instance of Syria alone, Ms. Gabbard insisted the United States was supporting al Qaeda and ISIS (they were not), praised Russia for standing up to terrorism in Syria (they were bombing anti-ISIS rebels). Ms. Gabbard stated she remained “skeptical” that the Assad regime was responsible for Khan Shaykhun chemical weapons attack that killed 74 civilians and prompted President Trump to respond with airstrikes. Ms. Gabbard has offered an alternative history of events in Syria since 2012, and has often placed malign American intent at the center of a civil conflict.

What is the source of these bizarre claims? To find media institutions that support the positions listed above, one has to travel outside of mainstream media entirely and into the realm of activist blogs and state-sponsored outlets. Denial of Syrian government responsibility for chemical weapons attacks, for example, has been a constant staple of Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan state media, as well as conspiratorial websites belonging to the political fringes in the United States. In order to justify its own rapacious belligerence, this narrative goes, the United States fabricates war crimes on the part of governments targeted for “regime change.”

It is not particularly disturbing that Rep. Gabbard would oppose American intervention in Syria, especially given her own distinguished military service in Iraq. But it is disturbing how closely her rhetoric mirrors that of America’s principal adversaries in the Middle East. That the United States sponsored and supported ISIS is the fever dream of Middle Eastern propaganda ministers, not a sound basis for a piece of American legislation. How could a progressive serving on the Foreign Affairs Committee have the same read on Syria as Mahmoud Ahmadinajad and David Duke? After all, plenty of progressives including Sen. Bernie Sanders have proven capable of articulating a more restrained foreign policy without taking personal meetings with mass murderers.

All of this suggests a worldview that is closer to the anti-imperial machinations of despots than any recognized school of foreign policy, and would be virtually unprecedented in an American president. If there is any precedent for Ms. Gabbard’s conception of American empire, it was probably best represented by President Trump’s infamous response to Bill O’Reilly’s question about Vladimir Putin’s consistent murder of journalists: “You think our country’s so innocent?”

An open hostility to the perspective of America’s foreign policy and security apparatus is a growth industry in politics in 2019. While President Obama and Ben Rhodes complained privately about the undue influence of the foreign policy “blob,” President Trump openly questions the veracity of claims made by our own intelligence agencies and military officials. Any relative success of Ms. Gabbard in a presidential run would represent the viability of this strategy on both sides of the aisle, and confirm the existence of a broad, America-skeptic coalition.

To be clear, there is nothing illegitimate about skepticism regarding America’s seemingly endless Middle Eastern wars. After all, a strong majority of Americans now believe the war in Iraq was a catastrophic policy error. But The New York Times op-ed page failing to predict failure in Iraq does not mean we should turn to RT for our understanding of world events. The current resident of the White House has an a la carte relationship with the truth, pulling factual justifications from any and every source regardless of its credibility. In the 2020 primary, Democrats will have to decide if Ms. Gabbard’s similar use of “alternative facts” is a strategy their party can tolerate.

• Evan Barrett, formerly deputy director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, works as an independent consultant.