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.”
