[Peace-discuss] Robert Parry: Trump’s Tulsi Gabbard Factor

[Robert Naiman]

This is "making the rounds."

Trump’s Tulsi Gabbard Factor
November 21, 2016
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/11/21/trumps-tulsi-gabbard-factor/

*Exclusive:* By inviting in Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat hostile to
“regime change” wars, President-elect Trump may be signaling a major break
with Republican neocon orthodoxy and a big shake-up of the U.S. foreign
policy establishment, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

Two weeks after Donald Trump’s shocking upset of Hillary Clinton, the
imperious and imperial neoconservatives and their liberal-interventionist
understudies may finally be losing their tight grip on U.S. foreign policy.

The latest sign was Trump’s invitation for a meeting with Rep. Tulsi
Gabbard, D-Hawaii, on Monday. The mainstream media commentary has almost
completely missed the potential significance of this start-of-the-work-week
meeting, suggesting that Trump is attracted to Gabbard’s tough words on
“radical Islamic terrorism.”
[image: Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii.]
<https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/gabbard.png>

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii.

Far more important is that Gabbard, a 35-year-old Iraq War veteran,
endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries because of his
opposition to neocon/liberal-hawk military adventures. She starred in one
of the strongest *political ads*
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QEy0mxfFaM&feature=youtu.be> of the
campaign, a message to Hawaiians, called “The Cost of War.”

“Bernie Sanders voted against the Iraq War,” Gabbard says. “He understands
the cost of war, that that cost is continued when our veterans come home.
Bernie Sanders will defend our country and take the trillions of dollars
that are spent on these interventionist, regime change, unnecessary wars
and invest it here at home.”

In the ad, Gabbard threw down the gauntlet to the neocons and their
liberal-hawk sidekicks, by accusing them of wasting trillions of dollars
“on these interventionist, regime change, unnecessary wars.” Her comments
mesh closely with Trump’s own perspective.

After the meeting on Monday, Gabbard released a statement confirming that
the focus of the discussion had been her opposition to escalating the war
in Syria by following neocon/liberal-hawk suggestions for a “no-fly zone”
that would require widespread U.S. military destruction of Syrian
government installations and the killing of a large number of Syrians.

“President-elect Trump asked me to meet with him about our current policies
regarding Syria, our fight against terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS,
as well as other foreign policy challenges we face,” Gabbard said. “I felt
it important to take the opportunity to meet with the President-elect now
before the drumbeat of war that neocons have been beating drag us into an
escalation of the war to overthrow the Syrian government — a war which has
already cost hundreds of thousands of lives and forced millions of refugees
to flee their homes in search of safety for themselves and their families. …

“While the rules of political expediency would say I should have refused to
meet with President-elect Trump, I never have and never will play politics
with American and Syrian lives. …

“I shared with [President-elect Trump] my grave concerns that escalating
the war in Syria by implementing a so-called no fly/safe zone would be
disastrous for the Syrian people, our country, and the world. It would lead
to more death and suffering, exacerbate the refugee crisis, strengthen ISIS
and al-Qaeda, and bring us into a direct conflict with Russia which could
result in a nuclear war.”

*Trading Places*

So, the surprise election results on Nov. 8 may have represented a “trading
places” moment for the neocons and liberal hawks who were eagerly counting
the days before the “weak” President Barack Obama would turn over the
Commander-in-Chief job to former Secretary of State Clinton who had *made
clear that she shared their hawkish agenda*
<https://consortiumnews.com/2016/04/16/yes-hillary-clinton-is-a-neocon/> of
escalating the war in Syria with a “no-fly/safe zone,” and ratcheting up
the New Cold War with Russia.
[image: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressing the AIPAC
conference in Washington D.C. on March 21, 2016. (Photo credit: AIPAC)]
<https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/thumb_PC2016_HillaryClinton.jpg>

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressing the AIPAC conference
in Washington D.C. on March 21, 2016. (Photo credit: AIPAC)

There was even speculation that one of Clinton’s neocon favorites within
the State Department, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs
Victoria Nuland, might be rewarded with State’s top job for her “regime
change” in Ukraine that sparked the start of the New Cold War in 2014.

Nuland, the *wife of arch-neocon Robert Kagan*
<https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/20/a-family-business-of-perpetual-war/>,
sabotaged President Obama’s emerging strategy of collaborating with Russian
President Vladimir Putin on sensitive global issues. In 2013-14, Putin
helped orchestrate two of Obama’s brightest foreign policy successes:
Syria’s surrender of its chemical weapons arsenal and Iran’s guarantee that
it would not develop nuclear weapons.

But those agreements infuriated the neocons who favored escalating both
crises into direct U.S. bombing campaigns aimed at Syria and Iran – in
accordance with the desires of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
and the Saudi monarchy. Yet. there was perhaps even greater alarm at what
the next move of the Obama-Putin tag team might be: demanding that Israel
finally get serious about a peace deal with the Palestinians.

So, the neocons took aim at Ukraine, which neocon National Endowment for
Democracy President Carl Gershman identified as “the biggest prize” and an
important stepping stone to an even bigger prize, *a “regime change” in
Moscow removing Putin*
<https://consortiumnews.com/2016/10/07/key-neocon-calls-on-us-to-oust-putin/>
.

While Gershman’s NED funded (with U.S. taxpayers’ money) scores of projects
inside Ukraine, training anti-government activists and journalists, Nuland
took the point as the key organizer of a putsch that removed elected
President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22, 2014, and replaced him with a
fiercely anti-Russian regime.

Given the geopolitical sensitivity of Ukraine to Russia, including its
naval base on the Crimean peninsula, Putin had little choice but to react,
supporting a referendum in Crimea in which 96 percent of the voters favored
leaving Ukraine and rejoining Russia – and assisting ethnic Russian rebels
in the east who resisted the violent ouster of their president.

Of course, the mainstream Western news media presented these developments
as simply a case of “Russian aggression” and a “Russian invasion.” And,
faced with this new “group think,” Obama quickly abandoned his partner,
Putin, and joined in the chorus of condemnations.

Nuland emerged as a new star inside the State Department, a hero of the New
Cold War which was expected to funnel trillions of tax dollars into the
Military-Industrial Complex.

*Trump’s Heresy*

But Trump surprisingly adopted the position that Obama shied away from, a
recognition that Putin could be an important asset in resolving major
international crises. The real-estate-mogul-turned-politician stuck to that
“outside-the-mainstream” position despite fierce attacks from rival
Republicans and Democratic presidential nominee Clinton, who even mocked
him as Putin’s “puppet.”
[image: President Barack Obama meets with President Vladimir Putin of
Russia on the sidelines of the G20 Summit at Regnum Carya Resort in
Antalya, Turkey, Sunday, Nov. 15, 2015. National Security Advisor Susan E.
Rice listens at left. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)]
<https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/p111515ps-1198.jpg>

President Barack Obama meets with President Vladimir Putin of Russia on the
sidelines of the G20 Summit at Regnum Carya Resort in Antalya, Turkey,
Sunday, Nov. 15, 2015. National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice listens at
left. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

After Trump’s upset victory on Nov. 8, many pundits assumed that Trump
would fall back in line with Washington’s hawkish foreign-policy
establishment by giving top jobs to neocons, such as former U.S. Ambassador
to the United Nations John Bolton and ex-CIA Director James Woolsey, or
Netanyahu favorites, such as former Republican presidential nominee Mitt
Romney or ex-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

So far, however, Trump has followed a different course, more in line with
the libertarian thinking of the Koch brothers – not only the more famous
ones, Charles and David, but also their long-estranged brother William, who
I’m told have become behind-the-scenes advisers to the President-elect.

Though Trump did offer high-profile meetings to the likes of Romney and
Giuliani, he has yet to hand over any key foreign-policy job to the
Republican neocon wing. His one major announcement in that area has been
naming as National Security Advisor retired Gen. Michael Flynn, who led the
Defense Intelligence Agency when it produced *a prescient warning that U.S.
policy in Syria*
<https://consortiumnews.com/2015/11/17/lost-on-the-dark-side-in-syria/> would
lead to the creation of an “Islamic State.”

Though Flynn is regarded as a hardliner in the fight against Islamic
jihadist terror, he is seen as an independent thinker regarding how best to
wage that war. For instance, Flynn has objected to the notion that drone
strikes, i.e., killing off individual jihadists, is a route to success.

“We’ve tended to say, drop another bomb via a drone and put out a headline
that ‘we killed Abu Bag of Doughnuts’ and it makes us all feel good for 24
hours,” Flynn *said*
<https://consortiumnews.com/wp-admin/%E2%80%9CWe%E2%80%99ve%20tended%20to%20say,%20drop%20another%20bomb%20via%20a%20drone%20and%20put%20out%20a%20headline%20that%20%E2%80%98we%20killed%20Abu%20Bag%20of%20Doughnuts%E2%80%99%20and%20it%20makes%20us%20all%20feel%20good%20for%2024%20hours,%E2%80%9D%20Flynn%20said.%20%E2%80%9CAnd%20you%20know%20what?%20It%20doesn%E2%80%99t%20matter.%20It%20just%20made%20them%20a%20martyr,%20it%20just%20created%20a%20new%20reason%20to%20fight%20us%20even%20harder.%E2%80%9D>.
“And you know what? It doesn’t matter. It just made them a martyr, it just
created a new reason to fight us even harder.”

That leaves open the possibility that a President Trump might eschew the
“whack-a-mole” approach that has bedeviled the “war on terror” and instead
go after the “mole nest” – if you will – the Saudi monarchy that has long
financed Islamic extremists both through the fundamentalist Wahhabi brand
of Sunni Islam and by supplying money and weapons to jihadists dating back
at least to the Afghan mujahedeen in the 1980s, the origin of modern
Islamic terrorism.

Traditional U.S. politicians have recoiled from facing up to the hard
reality that the Saudi monarchy is the real “terror central” because of
Saudi Arabia’s enormous riches and influence, which is now enhanced by *its
quiet alliance with Israel*
<https://consortiumnews.com/2015/04/15/did-money-seal-israeli-saudi-alliance/>
in
their joint campaign against the so-called “Shiite crescent,” from Iran
through Syria to Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Taking on this Saudi-Israel nexus has long been regarded as political
suicide, given Israel’s extraordinary lobbying power and Saudi Arabia’s
exceptional wealth. But Trump may be assembling a team that is “crazy”
enough to take on that mission.

So, while the fight over the future of U.S. foreign policy is far from over
– the neocons will surely flex their muscles at the major think tanks, on
the op-ed pages and inside the halls of Congress – the Trump transition is
showing some creativity in assembling a national security team that may go
in a very different direction.

Much will become apparent in Trump’s choice of Secretary of State. If it’s
someone like Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, or Rep. Gabbard or a libertarian
from the Kochs’ world, that would be bad news for the neocons. If it’s
someone like Romney, Giuliani, Bolton or Woolsey, then that will mean that
President-elect Trump has blinked and the neocons can breathe a sigh of
relief.

*Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories
for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest
book, **America’s Stolen Narrative,** either in print here
<https://org.salsalabs.com/o/1868/t/12126/shop/shop.jsp?storefront_KEY=1037> or
as an e-book (from Amazon
<http://www.amazon.com/Americas-Stolen-Narrative-Washington-ebook/dp/B009RXXOIG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1350755575&sr=8-1&keywords=americas+stolen+narrative>
and barnesandnoble.com
<http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/americas-stolen-narrative?keyword=americas+stolen+narrative&store=ebook&iehack=%E2%98%A0>).*
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