<\/p>\n
By Michael Sainato<\/span> and Chelsea Skojec Since she spoke out against the limited debate schedule set up by former\u00a0DNC<\/a>\u00a0Chair\u00a0Debbie Was<\/a>serman Schultz<\/a>\u00a0during the 2016 Democratic primaries, Rep.\u00a0Tulsi Gabbard has been a thorn in the side of the\u00a0Democratic\u00a0<\/a>establishment. After resigning from her position as\u00a0DNC<\/a>\u00a0vice chair to campaign on behalf of Sen.\u00a0Bernie Sanders<\/a>, she became a prominent Sanders surrogate. During the beginning of the\u00a0Standing Rock<\/a>\u00a0protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, Gabbard was one of very few\u00a0politicians to speak up on behalf of the Standing Rock Sioux and water protectors, even making a trip out to Standing Rock with thousands of veterans. That support from veterans helped push the Army Corps of Engineers to delay the pipeline\u2019s construction until an Environmental Impact Assessment was conducted to explore different routes.<\/p>\n Transcending the partisan\u00a0fray in favor of following her own principles yet again, Gabbard took an unannounced trip to Syria with former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who\u00a0lead opposition<\/a>\u00a0against the Iraq War at its offset and organized a congressional coalition to stop it. Kucinich has made several trips to Syria to promote a peaceful resolution to the war there.<\/p>\n Gabbard\u2019s trip to\u00a0Syria<\/a>\u00a0isn\u2019t the\u00a0isolated event her critics make it out to be. In 2015, PBS Frontline<\/em>\u2019s Martin Smith went on a similar trip to Syria, filming a documentary about how Syrian President Assad and the Syrians living under the control of the government viewed the Syrian War. \u201cFor the most part, people were open about their hopes and fears,\u201d Smith wrote<\/a>\u00a0in 2015. \u201cAs to how the war began, they had a consistent narrative: That the protesters that took to the streets in 2011 had legitimate demands, but that the demonstrations were quickly hijacked by foreign backed jihadists. They reject the idea that Western-backed rebels are \u201cmoderates\u201d as they are often termed in the US.\u201d Smith noted that, although Assad had his critics, the people of Syria don\u2019t want their central government\u2014like those\u00a0of Iraq and Libya\u2014to collapse, virtually destroying the countries\u2019 infrastructures. Smith predicted that the only way peace in Syria would be established is if an agreement between Assad\u2019s government and rebel forces was reached, even if it redrew the border lines of Syria.<\/p>\n After her trip to Syria, Gabbard expresse<\/a>d\u00a0similar sentiments about the need to establish peace. \u201cI return to Washington, DC with even greater resolve to end our illegal war to overthrow the Syrian government,\u201d she wrote. \u201cFrom Iraq to Libya and now in Syria, the U.S. has waged wars of regime change, each resulting in unimaginable suffering, devastating loss of life, and the strengthening of groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS.\u201d<\/p>\n The response to Gabbard\u2019s trip to Lebanon and Syria, during which she met with the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, incited attacks from the establishment and mainstream media for deviating from the political status quo. These attacks, which conflate Gabbard\u2019s diplomacy with endorsed support for Assad, continue to distort the United States\u2019 involvement in Syria. A\u00a0Washington Post<\/a><\/em>\u00a0op-ed and a\u00a0Daily Beast<\/a>\u00a0editorial claimed Gabbard\u2019s insistence that the United States is funding Syrian rebel groups, many of which turned out to be\u00a0terrorists<\/a>, is false.<\/p>\n However,\u00a0there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.\u00a0In June 2016, the\u00a0New York Times<\/a><\/em>\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that CIA weapons supplied to\u00a0Syrian<\/a>\u00a0rebels were making their way into the black market, due to the fact that the\u00a0CIA<\/a>\u00a0has little control over the rebel groups that they arm, fund and train. In March 2016, the\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/em>\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that Syrian militias funded by the Pentagon and the CIA were fighting one another, another example of how little control U.S. Intelligence agencies have over the groups they have finance. The\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/em>\u00a0cites Fursan al\u00a0Haqq as a rebel group being funded by the CIA\u2014which Gabbard has noted, and Reuters\u00a0corroborated<\/a>\u2014that has fought side-by-side with Al-Qaeda. Gabbard\u00a0explained<\/a>\u00a0in her proposal of the Stop Arming Terrorists Act that the United States has been inadvertently funding terrorists by funding these disorganized rebel groups. Her critics distort her statements to make it seem as though Gabbard is claiming the United States is directly providing ISIS and Al-Qaeda with funding and weapons.<\/p>\n Bassam and Ellie Khawam, the two men who funded Gabbard\u2019s trip and have been actively pushing for peace in Syria for years, are from Cleveland, Ohio\u2014where Dennis Kucinich\u2019s former congressional district is located. In 2011, The Plain Dealer\u00a0interviewed<\/a>\u00a0Bassam Khawam, a Christian from Lebanon, about the Syrian War, and in 2013 a Cleveland-based ABC News affiliate\u00a0quoted<\/a>\u00a0him\u00a0protesting the war in Syria. Gabbard, in defense to her critics about the funding of the trip, announced that she would reimburse the costs and pay for it out of her own pocket. The show of good faith from Gabbard inflamed criticisms from establishment war hawks, who have been exploiting a\u00a0neo-McCarthyism<\/a>\u00a0narrative surrounding allegations of Russian election interference to push their pro-war agenda in Syria.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat do these outraged observers want \u2018us\u2019 to do to ameliorate Syrian suffering? For prominent pundits and leading editorial boards, the answer is usually bombing the Syrian government,\u201d wrote Adam Johnson in an\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0The Nation<\/em>, criticizing political pundits who feign outrage over the war in Syria to manufacture consent to overthrow the Syrian Government. \u201cOne\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0puts the total\u00a0CIA<\/a>\u00a0spending on anti-Assad forces at $1 billion a year\u2014or one in every 15 dollars of the CIA\u2019s official budget. This inconvenient fact is tossed into the memory hole in favor of a simplistic fable of Rwanda-like indifference.\u201d<\/p>\n Johnson added that pundits will admit that there was no exit strategy in the interventionist disasters of Libya and Iraq, but they offer no plan to prevent a similar political vacuum from happening in Syria.<\/p>\n These same pro-war pundits that\u00a0push<\/a>\u00a0for further intervention in\u00a0Syria<\/a>\u00a0did the same thing when they manufactured consent for regime change in\u00a0Iraq<\/a>\u00a0and Libya. By citing the corruption and humans rights abuses of those countries\u2019 dictators, they helped manipulate popular consensus into supporting the toppling of those governments, which has in turn created more chaos in the Middle East and provided a haven for terrorist groups to thrive.\u00a0Gabbard\u00a0<\/a>has reiterated throughout the Syrian conflict her pro-peace stance, and she has never claimed\u00a0support for Assad. Rather, she acknowledges there will no peace in Syria if the war hawk agenda to overthrow the Syrian government is implemented.<\/p>\n
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