Indeed the mainstream press is brutal, yet you bring up a very good point about the meeting with Assad. I would like talk more about that. I'd love to also share more about her foreign policy record as I do think she has a solid history here if you are pro-peace. I am really torn between Bernie, Elizabeth Warren and Tulsi Gabbard at the moment, each for different reasons, but I think just on the subject of peace alone Gabbard is the most consistent in the race.
Any candidate can offer platitudes, so your skepticism is understandable. For me the litmus test is does a politician's record match the things they are talking about? For instance Obama promised he would close Gauntanamo Bay as president, but he didn't. Trump said he was against the war in Iraq when he was running for president, then the Howard Stern audio surfaced showing that he did think we should go into Iraq. Hillary Clinton said she regretted going to War in Iraq, and wouldn't gave gone had she known the intelligence was false. However, her private emails revealed that she in fact was aware of the darker purposes of the war, and saw it as a business opportunity for oil corporations, and that was why she voted as she did.
In the case of Tulsi Gabbard I have not uncovered these sorts of inconsistencies between her words and the legislation she supported in regards to peaceful intentions in the 15 years she's been in congress. If you do happen to see a flip-flop like that on foreign policy let me know, because I need to know that.
One of the good things I think she did was shine attention on the fact that the United States government has funded and armed various groups in Qatar, Saudia Arabia and Turkey to overthrow the Syrian Government. This policy of our government is troubling not just because of the desire to not have military confrontation, but because the opposition groups may or may not have ties to terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda and Isis or Hamas.
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_58cafc26e4b00705db4da8aa/amp
https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/trump-warms-qatar-lawmakers-still-see-terrorist-ties
https://www.counterextremism.com/countries/turkey
Tulsi Gabbard introduced the Stop Arming Terrorist bill to the House barring us from potentially selling weapons to groups like Isis. It should be a common sense position, and yet she stood virtually alone in this fight, and this is one of many indicators to me that she is serious about not taking us into more needlesss conflict. Here she explains what this bill would have done on NPR.
https://www.npr.org/2016/12/10/5050...-introduces-bill-to-halt-u-s-arms-supplies-to
Gabbard has co-sponsored nearly 350 pieces of legislation to congress, and a great deal of these measures are anti-war. Here is a log of the bills.
https://projects.propublica.org/represent/members/G000571/bills-cosponsored/115
She supported the War Powers resolution which would restrict a president's nearly unbridled authority to engage the country in armed conflict without the approval of congress, and returned power to back to the congress as it was in in 1973. This also would have stopped the U.S from funding Saudi Arabia from comitting genocide against Yemen in the current war.
https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2018/0...ort-for-saudi-arabias-genocidal-war-in-yemen/
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.us...upport-for-saudi-led-war-in-yemen?context=amp
Now with regards to Syria I would like to clarify that Gabbard's trip was not organized by the Assad regime. Adam Kinzinger, who is against withdrawing in Syria and is very aggressive in this area of foreign policy, is framing a somewhat false narrative by characterizing this as an Assad-led tour, which indeed would reveal nothing about the plight of people in Syria.
AACCESS is not affiliated with Assad. It is a US-based organization in Ohio, its website says its offers translation services, shelter for refuges, counsels immigrants on their legal rights, and.
There is a board member of the Arab American Community Center, a medical adviser, named Bassam Khawam that helped the delegation of lawmakers get there, who has been reported in news outlets as a member of a radical political party called SSNP. He says he has never been a member of this party at all.
Whether he is or not however, what is important to bear in mind still is that this is ultimately a citizen, he does not hold a position in the Syrian government. Neither Assad's government or the political party SSNP orchestrated Gabbard's trip or meetings with civilians and refugees.
https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/514763/
Something else that is reported less frequently is that Gabbard's spent time in various cities in the middle east from Aleppo to Beirut during her travels, and met with multiple diplomats and important people including the President of Lebanon, our own US Ambassador Elizabeth Richards, humanitarian workers, archbishops. I think Gabbard's visit in full context sounds much more reasonable than the headline grabber of a meeting with Assad. It is also worth noting that even meeting with Assad is something that the speaker of the house Pelosi did. Many lawmakers have met with leaders of hostile countries in the hope of learning more about the situation, and even avoiding confrontation.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/logan-act-and-its-limits
What constitutes a violation of the Logan Act is somewhat vague. It simply reads that it cannot be without the authority of the United States. That she needed the approval of her political party is not encoded the law, it just can't be "without the authority of the United States."
She could have privately sought approval from the pentagon for instance and that alone can be interpreted as sufficient. Below is the dry legal language.
The last thing I would also like to make clear is that Kinzinger is using more hyperbole when he said that Gabbard declared everyone she met to be happy under Assad's government. Gabbard is not suggesting this.
This was the full op-ed that Tulsi Gabbard wrote in her local newspaper about her experience in Syria, in which she indeed acknowledges hearing opposition to Assad from the people of Syria, the very opposite of what was claimed she said.
https://medium.com/@TulsiGabbard/the-syrian-people-desperately-want-peace-e308f1777a34
Now what she has indeed said is that the Syrian people are in afraid of the rebel groups that we fund as well as Assad, which is why she calls for the United States not to arm rebels that might end up also hurting the people, and advocates for a de-escalation. Saying this alone is enought to be conflated with supporting Assad.
It is possible to disagree with a government, but not necessarily be in favor of military intervention in the country. I think she has a nuanced foreign policy that often gets lost in translation.
This RealClearPolitics link uses longer statements by Gabbard she made when she visited the show The View, and I think she does a good job clarifying what her views are. Give a listen if you'd like to know more. Also feel free to pm too if you want to talk more!
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/v...when_i_hear_your_name_i_think_assad_apologist
