Rep. Tulsi Gabbard today said she opposes President Obama’s plan to arm and train select rebel groups in Syria, the beginning of what some commentators are calling the Third Iraq War.
According to a press statement released to day by her office:
“This proposed strategy actually reflects a lack of commitment to really destroy ISIL,” Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard said this afternoon during debate on the House floor. “We must focus on one mission: to destroy ISIL and other Islamic extremists who’ve declared war on us. Our mission should not be to topple the Assad regime, which would make the situation in the region even worse and more unstable than it is today. We’ve heard this story before. We know how it ends. Look at Iraq. Look at Libya. Clearly, our leaders have not learned their lesson. We must focus on taking out our enemies and investing in our own country here at home.”
Congresswoman Gabbard also called the strategy unrealistic, the mission unclear, and said we do not understand who the opposition forces are, cannot trust them, and raised the prospect that our weapons could fall into the hands of our enemies.
It’s unclear whether Gabbard is saying that she would support a direct, boots on the ground offensive against Islamic State fighters by U.S. troops. Is that what she means by “taking out our enemies”?
Despite that uncertainty, her position does seem consistent with the stand she took last year in opposition to U.S. military intervention in the Syrian civil war. At that time, she said it would be “a serious mistake.”
She made several arguments in support of her position last year.
“As a soldier, I understand that before taking any military action, our nation must have a clear tactical objective, a realistic strategy, the necessary resources to execute that strategy—including the support of the American people—and an exit plan,” Gabbard said in a press release. “The proposed military action against Syria fails to meet any of these criteria.”
She went on.
“Presently, Syria does not present a direct security threat to the United States. Military action will undermine our national defense, as even a limited strike could very easily escalate into a regional conflict, stretching thin a military that has been at war for more than 12 years.”
And, further:
“We should learn from history; we cannot afford to be the world’s policeman. The United States should not insert itself in the midst of this civil war, which is rooted in sectarian hatred and animosity between various warring religious groups.
Last month, Gabbard called for the U.S. to supply heavy weapons to Kurdish forces which have been fighting the Islamic State in the north of Iraq.
According to The Hill newspaper:
“We need to arm the Kurds with heavy weapons, because they are doing the hard work on the ground. They are fighting against ISIS, and we can augment that and support that with our targeted air strikes,” she said on “This Week.”
But her statement drew a critical response from Matthew Hoh and Matt Southworth, also Iraq veterans working with Washington-based nonprofits.
Their response, also appearing in The Hill, said in part:
Entering the conflict on behalf of the Kurds, as promoted by Gabbard, (and coincidentally, the one million dollar a year Kurdish lobby industry in Washington, DC) in order to help the Kurds protect the oil-rich territory they hold would put the United States, again, into direct combat with non-Kurdish Sunni and Shia communities throughout Iraq.
Such combat will not force the political compromise necessary for the reduction and eventual cessation of violence, but will make such a compromise much less likely. Why would the Kurds be inclined to make concessions while they enjoy robust US military support and greater autonomy from Shia governed Iraq?
Recent news reports seem to support their cautious advice.
My Hawaii Monitor column in Civil Beat today cited some of these (“Hawaii Monitor: Thinking Clearly About the Islamic State“).
The U.S. air campaign against the Islamic State is already yielding unexpected consequences. While the U.S. is trying to push the new Iraqi government toward increased inclusiveness in order to end the brutal sectarian civil war, Shiite militia fighters are reportedly using the military advantage provided by American bombing to spread their own brand of terror in Sunni areas recently freed from Islamic State occupation.
“The unlikely coalition of Kurdish peshmerga fighters, Shiite militias and the U.S. air force won a major victory when it broke a siege of the Shiite Turkmen town of Amirli last week and drove ISIS from 25 nearby Sunni towns and villages,” reported Isabel Coles last week, writing in Lebanon’s Daily Star.
“But the aftermath is far from what the Americans envisioned. Smoke now rises from those Sunni villages, where some houses have been torched by Shiite militias. Others are abandoned, the walls daubed with sectarian slogans.”
A Shiite militia commander told Coles, “There is no way back for them; we will raze their homes to the ground.”
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
From the December 5, 2006 edition of Westwood One’s The Radio Factor with Bill O’Reilly:
O’REILLY: “So, tomorrow when the Baker Commission is released, report is released — we’ll talk about it tomorrow — this is what’s going to happen: The commission is going to say that the USA has to engage Syria and Iran in talks. OK, fine. I’m going to send [co-host] E.D. Hill right over to talk to them. She’s very nice and attractive, and they’ll like her, OK? So, that’s what they’re going to say, we’ve got to talk to those people, and then we have to redeploy — yes, that’s necessary in Iraq — we’ll redeploy our troops, got to get them out of Anbar, in those places — let them kill each other.
“Do I care if the Sunnis and Shiites kill each other in Iraq? No. I don’t care. Let’s get our people out of there. Let them kill each other. Maybe they’ll all kill each other, and then we can have a decent country in Iraq.
http://mediamatters.org/video/2006/12/06/oreilly-do-i-care-if-the-sunnis-and-shiites-kil/137470
sigh.
Gabbard must be supporting direct deployment of US forces, if she’s going to describe Obama’s plan as being one that “reflects a lack of commitment.” If that’s not the case, then I’m afraid that in Tulsi, we have a congresswoman who’s trying to evade taking a position, allowing her to disavow whatever consequences takes place as a result of US action against ISIL.
And consequences, there will be. Just as innocent Palestinians suffered in the name of Iraeli strikes against the Hamas, so too will peaceful Syrian civilians get caught in the crossfire between US supported forces and ISIL. Now, as upsetting as it was to see those barbaric ISIL beheadings on video, does everyone who plans to support full-on US intervention prepared to stomach seeing women and children getting maimed and killed by weapons fired by the US and its allies? That’s the reality people had better think about before taking a position on the matter.
Let’s hear not only from Tulsi Gabbard, but also from Mark Takai, Charles Djou, and Kawika Crowley (Who?).
I’m not sure why economic war has not been waged first. It has been reported that IS has built a $2 billion war chest on revenues from oil fields in territory taken from Syria. Who on earth is buying oil from IS? Why? How and with whose help is IS laundering this money? If we can bring the Russian economy to its knees with sanctions including restrictions on access to capital, if we can enforce sanctions against Iran with other banking restrictions, why can’t we cut off the flow of money to these thugs? The market is awash in a glut of oil and IS customers could surely be supplied elsewhere and those who buy what is no doubt cheap(er) IS oil sanctioned, as well.
I know this is only one step but it should be the first and I haven’t heard anyone so much as mention it, here, nationally, or internationally. Instead it’s all bloody war, all the time.
Arming the Kurdistan fighters who have a stake in defeating ISIL is the wise thing to do at this point in time. It is not ‘doing nothing,’ it’s not directly deploying troops to Iraq, and it doesn’t involve vetting shady rebel groups. Wading into Syria asking, “Are you the good guys?” is not the direction the US needs to go in.
The Peshmenga fighters are the surrogate ‘boots on the ground’ to which many military leaders have alluded may have to happen in order to defeat ISIL – or at least give them a good fight. They are allies and they should be supported.
Economically speaking, it may be somewhat difficult to stop Turkey, etc. from buying oil from ISIL. I’ve read that they sell it for around $25 a barrel. Bottom line, it’s tough to stop people from chasing bargains – no matter who is offering them.
If there’s any confusion on Tulsi’s position on ISIS, I think it comes from trying to impose an overly simplistic solution to a complex problem.
The people who are dreaming of some kind of “inclusive” Iraqi government are doing just that – dreaming. After nearly $2 trillion dollars and years of occupation, U.S. forces couldn’t achieve an inclusive government in Iraq, so holding back from arming Kurdish allies to somehow think they’re going to create an “inclusive” Iraqi government makes zero logical sense.
The Kurds are basically ruling themselves and have been long allies of the U.S. so Tulsi’s support for arming them makes sense. I read her position on arming so-called “moderates” in Syria and she’s spot on – we don’t know them and can’t trust them and our weapons may well end up in the hands of ISIS. ISIS now controls much of the heavy weaponry we gave to Iraq. Haven’t we learned our lesson?