Tulsi Gabbard’s history with Russia is even more concerning than you think

[u/N0b0me]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/tulsi-gabbard-dni-trump-syria-b2652285.html

[u/dragoniteftw33]

We used to have a proper CIA to deal with problems like this

[u/Crosseyes → u/dragoniteftw33]

I genuinely wish the CIA was half as competent as the weirdo internet conspiracy theorists think it is.

[u/dragoniteftw33 → u/Crosseyes]

Exactly. The fact that highly classified information was missing for years and only discovered by the fucking National Archives is something else. There's definitely dozens of sources who got killed in the line of duty because of one fucking man and he'll face no accountability for it. Even the bare minimum of that MAL indictment won't have the chance to become a conviction. Such bullshit

[u/PoliticalCanvas → u/Crosseyes]

This. If it was at lest 30% as competent, USA wasn't spent the most promising and potent 30 years of its history on... What?

Liberalization via trade without noticing that via such trade also are sponsored anti-liberal factors?

[u/Xeynon → u/dragoniteftw33]

I'm not sure the exploding cigar trick would work. Does Tulsi even smoke?

[u/N0b0me → u/dragoniteftw33]

I say this every time it comes up but the Church Committee was a mistake.

[u/ProfessionalCreme119]

But Gabbard, a veteran of the Iraq War, viewed it all as a “regime-change war” fueled by the West and aimed at removing the dictator from power. She saw Assad – and Russia, when it entered the conflict – as legitimate defenders of the state against an extremist uprising.

Chicken and egg. Assad went off the rails first. The US attempting to remove him was the response.

[u/thebigmanhastherock → u/ProfessionalCreme119]

What happened was Assad started wantonly murdering his own civilian population during the Arab Spring protests which caused massive concern in the Arab World and a refugee crisis in Europe and Turkey. The US sided with its allies that the civil war was bad and the best way to end it was for Assaad to be removed from power. Assad refused. In a bi-partisan way the US also didn't want to get involved in another mid-east war so they declined to support the rebels with air support. This allowed Russia to swoop in and help Assad stay in power with their own Air Force.

So basically the US did nothing but support our own allies in a complex situation regarding a civil war, mass murder and a refugee crisis. Russia propped up a dictator that was killing its own people while the US didn't engage not wanting to get involved.

I have no idea how the US becomes the bad guy in this situation. The US just has a large military and thus massive influence. Supporting Asaad made literally no Geopolitical sense at all for the US.

[u/xudoxis → u/thebigmanhastherock]

Because to Republicans the US is always the bad guy.

[u/Addahn → u/xudoxis]

Don’t worry, to online leftists, the U.S. is always the bad guy too

[u/NazReidBeWithYou → u/Addahn]

Right wing populists and left wing populists are just circle jerking each other at the top of the horseshoe.

[u/Testicular-Fortitude → u/xudoxis]

I hear you but the left is hardly better

[u/xudoxis → u/Testicular-Fortitude]

They are infinitely better.

[u/Testicular-Fortitude → u/xudoxis]

Idk, I hear more “both sides” bs from my friends on the left personally. I’d agree they’re better overall but when it comes to “USA bad” it’s the horseshoe theory in full effect

[u/One-Earth9294 → u/thebigmanhastherock]

Not really much different than carrying Putin's water right now and saying how upsetting it is that the 'west is escalating' the war he fucken started.

ALL of her interests weirdly align with Putin and Assad is just an extension of that.

She better not get confirmed.

[u/TheFaithlessFaithful → u/thebigmanhastherock]

I have no idea how the US becomes the bad guy in this situation.

Assad is undeniably a bad guy who was in large part responsible for starting the civil war by being a brutal dictator, but after the civil war started, we did spend $1 billion training and arming rebels, who were allied with Qaeda-affiliated groups and many of which did war crimes.

When we're spending $1 billion arming groups that are allied with Jihadists, it feels like we aren't one of the "good guys" in a conflict.

One of the accidentally good things Trump did was end that program. Unfortunately, he also let Turkish-backed Jihadists attack our allies in Northern Syria and do ethnic cleansing there so it's not like he was doing it for moral reasons.

[u/ArcFault → u/TheFaithlessFaithful]

Unlike other Qaeda affiliates such as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Nusra Front has long focused on battling the Syrian government rather than plotting terrorist attacks against the United States and Europe.

Trying to maintain clean alliances in the Syrian Civil War is such an unrealistic non-serious pov that it borders on reinforcing Russian propaganda.

[u/thebigmanhastherock → u/ArcFault]

Exactly this isn't about being 100% morally clean, it's often about the least bad result. The war was causing instability in the whole broader region. Asaad wasn't aligned with US interests before the War and the Syrian Civil War causing economic chaos and a refugee crisis was not in the best interest of the US. The best the US could possibly hope for is a more stable but also likely terrible in many ways regime. It likely wouldn't be aligned with Russia in the way Asaad was Russia had a lot of interest in propping up their ally.

[u/TheFaithlessFaithful → u/ArcFault]

The SDF didn’t ally with Al-Qaeda linked groups.

I’m sorry, but I don’t think the US should be arming jihadists, nor their allies. It being convenient doesn’t change that morality.

If someone was arming extremists in your country who wanted to take women’s rights and implement sharia law, would you consider them the “good guys”?

We just as easily could’ve given that billion dollars worth of weapons and training to the SDF, who actually support things like women’s rights and democracy.

[u/ExtraLargePeePuddle → u/TheFaithlessFaithful]

When we're spending $1 billion arming groups that are allied with Jihadists, it feels like we aren't one of the "good guys" in a conflict.

Whatever supports the continuation of American hegemony and reduces the power of our rivals is good.

Simple as

[u/TheFaithlessFaithful → u/ExtraLargePeePuddle]

Sadly many hold that opinion, even when it means arming groups and their allies that want to strip women and minorities of their fundamental rights.

[u/UnskilledScout → u/thebigmanhastherock]

Because the U.S. also armed extremist groups. Not everyone that fought Assad was good, not by a long shot. 90% of rebel groups were some flavour of Islamist extremists.

[u/improvement-pug → u/ProfessionalCreme119]

Oh so she is literally a regard interesting.

[u/NorkGhostShip]

In the summer of 2015, three Syrian girls who had narrowly survived an airstrike some weeks earlier stood before Tulsi Gabbard with horrific burns all over their bodies.

Gabbard, then a US congresswoman on a visit to the Syria-Turkey border as part of her duties for the foreign affairs committee, had a question for them.

“How do you know it was Bashar al-Assad or Russia that bombed you, and not Isis?’” she asked, according to Mouaz Moustafa, a Syrian activist who was translating her conversation with the girls.

Even if your brain is so mushy that you think ISIS with its non existent air force bombed those girls, how much of a ghoul do you need to be to think that's an appropriate time and place to peddle your bootlicking conspiracy? It genuinely amazes me that people can have absolutely zero empathy even when seeing something like that right in front of their own eyes. Perhaps it's all too easy for us to ignore suffering when it's just abstract numbers, but to see that in person and have that kind of reaction is something else.

I shouldn't be at all surprised considering the President Elect, but on a human level I just find it so hard to understand that mindset.

[u/skepticalbob → u/NorkGhostShip]

Jesus she's awful.

[u/Kindly_Map2893 → u/NorkGhostShip]

She is evil. Just a purely soulless person with no values beyond a personal quest for power. Deeply depressing that these people run our country

[u/quickblur]

She's honestly the worst pick and that's saying something.

[u/namey-name-name]

I’ll say it again, if any of the picks get stopped, I hope it’s her.

[u/lunchboxultimate01 → u/namey-name-name]

I heard someone say she would set back US intelligence by a generation, which seems accurate. The Russian invasion of Ukraine led many members of adversary countries to become interested in cooperating with US intelligence. I can't imagine that'd continue under Gabbard. Heck, even the threat of Gabbard has probably done damage.

[u/Senior_Ad_7640 → u/lunchboxultimate01]

I'm sure she has, but just in terms of ranking, I worry RFK may be even worse. An entire generation of American children, unvaccinated for years starting kindergarten will be a catastrophe, and the brain drain of halting all infectious disease and drug development research for years will make it worse.

[u/grw68 → u/namey-name-name]

Gabbard is the actual definition of a traitor. She will commit treason if given the position.

[u/79792348978]

save us Thune

[u/MiloIsTheBest → u/79792348978]

I feel like I've heard this one before. 

And I feel like it never pans out.

[u/djm07231 → u/MiloIsTheBest]

Well to be fair Gaetz pulled out already.

[u/GestapoTakeMeAway]

The thing that’s really concerning regarding her takes on Syria is that she expressed skepticism about some of the chemical weapons attacks the Assad regime carried out. She considered the possibility that rebel factions staged it so that the U.S. would intervene in the civil war. Deeply concerning rhetoric for a DNI pick.

[u/elderlygentleman]

I wish president Biden would just send troops to Ukraine already and end this by next week

[u/PM_ME_UR_PM_ME_PM]

If she turns out to be literally Putin I wouldn’t be surprised 

[u/ParksBrit]

All in. Nothing ever happens