Asking Tulsi Gabbard About Bashar al-Assad

Back when I was at a local newspaper in New Hampshire, I had an interesting exchange with Gabbard on what would become the top issue facing her nomination for Director of National Intelligence.

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Let’s go back to January, 2020.

I was making $12 per hour as the politics reporter at The Keene Sentinel, an incredible local paper with great editors, a culture of identifying talent and an emphasis on good writing.

One of the best perks of this job came around New Hampshire primary season, when the candidates would come to our old building and sit down for editorial board interviews.

Perhaps the most memorable one for me — aside from almost pancaking Bernie Sanders in a near-collision when I entered the men’s bathroom, later informing one of his aides that the Senator’s fly was undone — was Tulsi Gabbard’s.

In our nearly hour-long sit-down, she demonstrated why so many of our readers were big fans of hers. You can see the early signs of her political transformation and appeal to the MAGA base throughout the video, but I wanted to draw your attention to an exchange at the very end.

Starting around the 51:05 mark, I asked her about her meeting with now-deposed Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

It did not go well.

I knew I was going to have one good chance to ask about it, and as the interview approached the end of our hour together, I decided to take my shot.

LAHUT: So we’ll wrap up on foreign policy. In your campaign messaging, you come down to the phrase “regime change wars.” I was wondering if you could unpack that, and what’s that in a distinction from? Like, what are the other kind of wars?

GABBARD: This is a really important question, ‘cause you hear I’m against endless wars. What does that actually mean? The war against terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda… is distinct from the regime change wars, the many regime change wars, that have been waged in the wake of 9/11.

She mentioned Sadam in Iraq, Ghadaffi in Lybia, and Assad in Sryia.

Notably, Assad still remained in power at the time. But so far, so good. This was the type of exchange I absolutely cherished at The Sentinel to give candidates more time to expand on their views, unencumbered by the TV cameras and the urge to come up with a neat and tidy soundbite.

The downside of this format for politicians is the opportunity for reporters like me to ask follow-up questions.

By that point in 2020, Gabbard had previously said voters just didn’t care about her 2017 meeting with Assad and they didn’t ask her about it all that often.

I was hearing something different from New Hampshire voters shopping around, mainly that they had heard something about Gabbard meeting with Assad, but they didn’t know why, or much in the way of specifics.

GABBARD: First of all, the only alternative to diplomacy is war, and I am committed — personally committed — to ensure that I exercise all diplomatic measures before seeing war as a last [resort]… doing all we can to prevent the unnecessary loss of life from my brothers and sisters in uniform.

And so I had been very focused on the issue of this regime change war in Syria, and had been invited there to hear from the people in Syria directly by Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who had been there before. And when we got there, we were invited to go and actually sit and meet with the President of Syria, Assad, and was able to have a frank conversation on a whole host of issues.

I think this practice of diplomacy is something that is unfortunately being seen as a bad thing in Washington, if you’re going and meeting with a dictator, if you’re going to meet with an adversary…

There are legal constructs in place for war criminals, the international criminal court… And I think at the forefront at all of this has to be, how are we making decisions that serve our national security interests and the interests of the American people.

She then went on to criticize then-President Donald Trump.

GABBARD: It’s not about, unfortunately, what we’ve seen Donald Trump doing lately — you know, [Iranian] General [Qasem] Soleimani, “He was a bad guy, we took out a bad guy.” We cannot have a commander-in-chief who is making these emotional decisions, just picking and choosing which bad guys in the world to take out, rather than making the decision based on foresight, having experience in national security and foreign policy, and what the consequences of these decisions are, and most importantly how they affect the interests of the American people.

This was the time for one of those follow-up questions.

LAHUT: So I mean, how did you have that discussion pertaining to like, Sarin gas, when there’s video of kids unable to breathe because of what this guy did to his own people? How did you tackle that, and how would a future president, or in your White House, handle something that heinous?

Spoiler alert — she didn’t answer the question.

GABBARD: Well I think it’s important first of all to make sure we get the facts. And I think that’s when President Trump launched two military attacks against Syria without military authorization, violating the constitution, he did so without evaluating all of the evidence.

I served in a war where I believed our leaders and our president who told us here’s the evidence: they have weapons of mass destruction, and they’re gonna give them to Al-Qaeda, so we’re going to go to war. I had no reason not to believe them, as a young soldier who really looked up to people like Hillary Clinton who would not lie to the American people. And yet they did…

There has been I think three or four reports that have come from the investigators from the UN… whistleblowers who reported one thing to their bosses, and their reports never saw the light of day. And the final report that was issued was not only [incomplete], but directly contradicted the information, the evidence that was gathered on the ground. So again, I think this points to being responsible as leaders to gather the evidence before we make decisions, and make sure those decisions actually uphold the interests of our country.

LAHUT: We don’t have to make it about the UN report, but who would’ve used them if it wasn’t him?

GABBARD: Well I mean, are you aware of all of the different players who were there in Syria?

LAHUT: I’ve read quite extensively about the issue, but I do wonder, I think, that there was pretty conclusive evidence that this was a practice people were worried he would do, and that he did do, and there were eye witness accounts, and I mean, yes, it is a complicated issue, you have all of these—

GABBARD: There are many terrorist organizations there, there are obviously the opposition to the Syrian government. There are so many different entities who are operating there in Syria.

My point is — and it’s not saying this happened or that didn’t happen — my point is that evidence has to drive the decisions that are being made. We cannot have a commander-in-chief making emotional decisions… because those decisions directly undermine our country’s national security interests in very different ways.

Gabbard’s team then signaled that the interview was over.

Maybe some Republican Senators will have the chance to dig down a little deeper into what, exactly, she thinks happened with Assad’s use of chemical weapons and what she makes of his departure.

She refused to answer questions on it from reporters earlier today.