The Nation Jan, 2019: Tulsi Gabbard's Deceptive Foreign Policy (why the RW loves Tulsi)

[hlthe2b]

Many are finding the RW's fixation and support for Gabbard a baffling paradox so I thought I'd try to find some possible reasons why the "love"

The Hawaii congresswoman’s anti-interventionism masks an affinity for authoritarians, nationalists, and Islamophobes.

https://www.thenation.com/article/tulsi-gabbard-president-foreign-islam/

--snip--

Yet it would be a mistake to place Gabbard in the lineage of internationalist, anti-war American leftism that seeks, among other things, to help emancipate and defend the oppressed. In fact, Gabbard’s public record points in a much different direction, toward an “America first” Trumpism of the left that would restore the Middle East’s dictators club as long as it benefits the United States. On closer analysis, hers is a foreign policy that favors authoritarianism cloaked as counter-terrorism, nationalism cloaked as anti-interventionism, and Islamophobia barely cloaked at all.

To begin, Gabbard doesn’t actually oppose military intervention, or the abusive tactics used to prosecute the “war on terror,” as long as they’re directed against those she identifies as Islamic extremists. She summarized her philosophy neatly in 2016, telling West Hawaii Today that “when it comes to the war against terrorists, I’m a hawk. When it comes to counterproductive wars of regime change, I’m a dove.”

Gabbard is a staunch supporter of the United States’ counter-ISIS campaign, but her view of the fight goes much further. During a visit to India in 2014, she told an interviewer that the United States had failed in its “very clear” mission to defeat “Islamic extremism”—the fight she said led her to enlist after the September 11 attacks—and that we needed “to focus all of our efforts and energy” and “root out this evil wherever it is.” When pressed on whether torture could be part of those efforts, Gabbard didn’t reject it, saying some believed it worked. Invoking the fantastical scenario of a ticking nuclear time bomb, Gabbard said that if she were president, she “would do everything in my power to keep the American people safe.” If there was a gap between Gabbard’s philosophy and the forever war, it was hard to spot.

--snip--
Opposing intervention and regime change was one thing, but Gabbard went much further, adopting Sisi and Assad’s talking points, denying their opponents agency and humanity, and effectively endorsing their systematic abuses of human rights as long as they were directed against the right people.

What laid behind this? Gabbard’s story about her time in Kuwait, including the “eye-opening” sight of “women covered from head to toe with burqa,” points to a years-long suspicion of Islam and a dalliance with Islamophobic strains in American politics that precedes the Trump presidency. In 2015, for instance, Gabbard spoke at a conference of Christians United for Israel, an organization led by John Hagee, a leading Islamophobe. Hagee—whom John McCain renounced in 2008 after Hagee said Adolf Hitler hastened God’s plan by forcing Jews back to Israel—has written of a “theological war” to prevent the spread of “global shari’ah.”

Recommend reading the entire article at the link above.

[question everything]

2. Sometimes, when individuals are set in their opinions

nothing will sway them they appear in control and, yes, presidential.

Beware of such autocrats.