The knives came swiftly out for Tulsi Gabbard, the four-term Congresswoman from Hawaii, immediately after she announced last week that she intends to run for President. Gabbard inspires a particularly intense level of vitriol, which is unique in that it largely appears to come from her “own side.” Democratic Party operatives, liberals and leftists all have differing criticisms of Gabbard, and they’re worth distinguishing between.
For mainstream Democrats, her most egregious and disqualifying sin was going to meet with Syrian leader Bashar Assad in January 2017. Though the trip was a diplomatic mission, intended to work toward brokering a peace settlement in the country — which had been ravaged by years of civil war, with hundreds of thousands killed, and a refugee crisis that continues to send political shockwaves through Europe — her domestic antagonists framed the trip as evidence that she was an Assad defender, apologist, sympathizer or some such other derogatory label.
Claiming that politicians are “defending” objectionable rulers they meet with, in pursuit of achieving some alternative to war, is a tired trope that has been frequently used throughout history to discredit diplomatic engagement. As Gabbard told me in an interview shortly after returning from Syria: “The reason why I decided to take this meeting on this trip was because if we profess to care about the Syrian people — if we really truly care about ending their suffering and ending this war — then we should be ready to meet with anyone if there is a chance that that meeting and that conversation could help to bring about an end to this war.”
“Whether you like it or not, if there is any hope for an end to the war in Syria, that engagement and conversation needs to happen,” she said.
Gabbard had previously called Assad a “brutal dictator,” but no amount of nuance seemed to placate her critics. Ironically, the mindset she projects was once ascendant in the Democratic Party: the notion that simply meeting with foreign despots was in no way tantamount to an endorsement of those despots, and in fact is crucial if diplomatic accords are to be achieved in some of the world’s most troubled regions.
In the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama invoked the example of John F. Kennedy to explain why he would be willing to take meetings “without preconditions” with the heads of Iran, Cuba and North Korea. Hillary Clinton, his opponent at the time, declared she would not do so and denounced the prospect as “naive.” Obama, needless to say, won the political argument.
Gabbard likened her efforts in Syria to those of a predecessor in Congress, Patsy Mink, who held the same Hawaii House seat she now occupies, and in 1972 met with a delegate representing the Viet Cong at a Paris peace conference. “She was criticized heavily for that, much as we are seeing now,” Gabbard told me. Mink also subsequently mounted a short-lived presidential bid, primarily as a critic of U.S. policy in Vietnam.
Much to the consternation of her critics, Gabbard’s posture continued in the ensuing months, when the Trump administration launched missile strikes against a Syrian airfield in retaliation for a chemical attack alleged to have been orchestrated by Assad. During an appearance on CNN, Gabbard said she was “skeptical” of the evidence put forward to justify the strikes. Although it would seem sensible to express skepticism of Trump’s claims, especially as they relate to the purported rationale for a military action, this was frantically denounced as further dictator-defending apologia on her part.
Leftist critics have raised a variety of additional foreign policy-related criticisms, including her perceived closeness to Hindu nationalists in India. But as she’s being introduced to the wider public, the central attribute of Gabbard’s being trumpeted far and wide is her attitude toward Syria. Dennis Kucinich, the former Congressman and two-time presidential candidate who accompanied Gabbard on the Syria trip — and who was also pilloried as a crank during his runs for what were regarded as unconscionably unorthodox foreign policy views — told me in 2017: “The attacks on Tulsi Gabbard really represent the death rattle of institutions who are dying from the bankruptcy of their policies and their lack of thought, their lack of heart, their lack of courage."
Kucinich also noted that they met with Syrian opposition elements over the course of the trip, contradicting accusations that it was somehow an entirely pro-Assad flattery session.
Domestically, Gabbard could only be classified as thoroughly in tune with the emergent strain of unabashed left-wing social democracy now remaking the Democratic Party: She supports Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and an end to federal marijuana prohibition. In 2016, she quit from the Democratic National Committee to endorse Bernie Sanders — at great political risk — and was selected by the Sanders campaign to enter his name into nomination at the Democratic convention. She now serves as a fellow at the Sanders Institute. On paper, these things would seem to suggest an appeal to the progressive left.
Instead, she’s widely seen as persona non grata. Much of this traces back to the Syria episode, unfairly treated as an albatross around her neck.
Tracey is a freelance writer.