No, Tulsi Gabbard is NOT 'the peace candidate'

Yes, this is the ultimate fallback for the Tulsi Twerkers and Kool-Aid drinkers, despite that I blogged already six months ago that she supports drone warfare. (And, that she still hasn't called out Indian for imposing martial law in Kashmir, due to her RSS connections.)

But, it's just not true.

And not, not just says me.

Medea Benjamin. You know, the founder of Code Pink?

Here's what she says in ranking Democratic presidential candidates on peace issues, specifically about Gabbard:

Gabbard’s actual voting record on war and peace issues, especially on military spending, is not nearly as dovish as that of Sanders. She voted for 19 of 29 military spending bills in the past six years, and she has only a 51 percent Peace Action voting record. Many of the votes that Peace Action counted against her were votes to fully fund controversial new weapons systems, including nuclear-tipped cruise missiles (in 2014, 2015 and 2016); an 11th U.S. aircraft-carrier (in 2013 and 2015); and various parts of Obama’s anti-ballistic missile program, which fueled the New Cold War and arms race she now decries. 

Gabbard voted at least twice (in 2015 and 2016) not to repeal the much-abused 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, and she voted three times not to limit the use of Pentagon slush funds. In 2016, she voted against an amendment to cut the military budget by just 1 percent. Gabbard received $8,192 in “defense” industry contributions for her 2018 reelection campaign. 

Gabbard still believes in a militarized approach to counterterrorism, despite studies showing that this feeds a self-perpetuating cycle of violence on both sides.

She is still in the military herself and embraces what she calls a “military mindset.”

Let's unpack some of this.

First, Sanders is not totally a peace candidate. Note his military Keynesianism of lusting for F-35s for the Vermont National Guard, among other things. He is better overall in 2020 than 2016, though.

And, Gabbard's voting record shows she's not close.

ANY candidate voting for Moar Nukes is NOT, NOT, NOT a or the "peace candidate."

That's not to mention that as an establishmentarian a media outlet as the New York Times says that the weapons Gabbard and Obama supported building more of could be more tempting to use than older ones. "More thinkable," was what one brass hat called them.

Nor is any candidate who opposed repealing the AUMF a "peace candidate." Period. End of story. Brains and David Bruce Collins need to read this. 

Finally, unless she's filling out a legal obligation to the Guard that started before she entered Congress, which she surely is not, as a member of the military, willingly and not for money, she's part of the problem, not part of the solution.

There's this. The old duopoly "Peace through Strength" angle. This Tweet was deleted, but I screengrabbed it.

I fired back, to another, nondeleted Tweet that, "if that's how you can define Tulsi as a 'peace candidate,' I reject the idea that you're a 'peace voter.'" 

And I do. As with other things Tulsi, black is white and white is black in this world.

Said person had deleted that Tweet, so I had to screenshot it. They then got passive-aggressive when I called them on that, deleted a second Tweet, then posted a third and said "screenshot that." Rather, I told them BYYYYEEEEE. And then did one of my two normal Twitter actions.

Next, Shikha Dalmia at Reason.

Dalmia ties the truth of Gabbard as I do, in fair part to her Islamophobia. (Media Benjamin takes a pass on that one, sadly.)

Gabbard, an Iraq war veteran, has made opposition to war her signature issue. During the second round of the Democratic debates, she was the only candidate who promised to "end wasteful regime change wars" and "take the trillions of dollars that we've been wasting on these wars and…redirect those resources into serving the needs of our people right here at home." But that doesn't make her a peacenik; it makes her an America Firster, like President Donald Trump. Indeed, although she went out of her way to condemn Trump as a "warmonger," there isn't much daylight between her position and his. ... 

Gabbard purports to be a dove when it comes to wars of regime change. But like Trump, she is a self-avowed hawk on Islamic terrorism. She repeatedly slammed President Barack Obama for shying away from referring to Al Qaeda and ISIS as "Islamic terrorists."

This ties back to the Twerker I screengrabbed above. This America First angle reminds me of the bon mot Tacitus made about ancient Rome, smartly putting it in the mouth of Briton chieftan Calgacus:

Ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant.

Or, in English

They create a desert and call it peace.

Dalmia then goes in for the "kill shot." Hate to use a military term, but with Gabbard and the TulsiTwerkers, what else is there?

As with me, three and a half years ago (yep, Kool-Aid drinkers, I've been on her that long), Dalmia goes back to her Hindutva Hindu nationalism support.

But perhaps her most disturbing transgression was her outreach to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Modi's militant brand of Hindu nationalism is fundamentally transforming a liberal country into an illiberal one where violent attacks on the minority Muslim population have become a daily occurrence—not because Indian Muslims are terrorists or radical extremists, but simply because they consume beef or refuse to chant the names of Hindu gods. Yet Gabbard, who, like me, was raised in the Hindu faith, has become close to Modi.

With this coming from a fellow Hindu, it cuts harder. Or it should.

One Twerker, "liked" by others, either missed, or deliberately ignored, the Hindutva angle. I called him out.

Finally, Max Van Dyke of International Policy Magazine. He gets at some "slipperiness" issues with Gabbard.

Van Dyke opens with the ultimate insult for the Twerkers. On foreign policy, Gabbard is an Obamiac!

Throughout her campaign, Gabbard and her supporters have sold her as the ‘peace candidate’ who will take on the military industrial complex and ‘end the wars.’ It is undeniable that her biggest selling point among her supporters is her perceived ‘anti-war’ stance on foreign policy. Yet a closer examination of her record on foreign policy reveals there’s more complexity: she appears to be following in Obama’s footsteps on foreign policy.

Boom!

Now, more to the slipperiness:

Gabbard’s entire foreign policy blueprint would not be possible without Obama’s. Gabbard has been clear on her stance in opposition to regime change wars. However, the qualifier ‘regime change’ does a lot of work in that formulation. Furthermore, during an interview with the Hawaii Tribune Herald, Gabbard described her views on foreign policy with the following; “when it comes to the war against terrorists, I’m a hawk. When it comes to counterproductive wars of regime change, I’m a dove.” Elaborating in her views on the war on terror during an appearance on NDTV, Gabbard told an interviewer that the U.S. has a responsibility to “root out evil where ever it is” to defeat “radical Islamic extremism.” One might easily mistake this as a quote from Dick Cheney. 

The War on Terror is vague by design. ‘Terror’ is not a clear enemy. It’s a vague opposition that theoretically exists all over the globe and can never be fully eradicated. 

Van Dyke earns extra kudos for calling out chief Gabbard Kool-Aid mixer Michael Tracey as a hypocrite on some of this. 

He then ties this back to Obama:

Nevertheless, Gabbard continues to support the use of drone strikes around the world and continues to support the War on Terror. By using the Obama trick of moving from ground troop wars to drone wars, Gabbard has been able to sell herself as an anti-war peace candidate. Yet her advocacy of using drones to fight terrorism “wherever it is,” necessarily leads to unending warfare. 

And, Gabbard, per Evgeny Morozov, might be seen as a "solutionist" on drones.

Even if one grants the ‘very limited precision strikes’ justification, her own supporters, when used by anyone other than Gabbard, view that as unacceptable.

And, of course, claiming that drones were "precise" even as he bombed Afghan wedding parties was a trademark of Dear Leader himself.

==

Meanwhile, per the person I screenquoted above? Some of the other flak I've recently gotten on Twitter is "interesting." The people delivering it even more so.

Bohdar Herman. Says he's a small-l libertarian. May be a capital L one. This supporter of "the peace candidate" retweets gun nut dreck ultimately connected to discredited gun nut pseudo-social scientist John Lott, banned from Twitter. Nuff said. Promoting gun violence ain't peace, dude. He's the Twerker I called out, above. I've read, per Edward Isaac-Dovere, that a lot of cryptocurrency people are also backing Gabbard. GACK. Ties in with paleocon and Ron Paul-tard promoter Michael Tracey touting her, though. Greens and Green-leaners who support crypto are way the hell deluded, in general, and if this is part of their Tulsi backing?

Twerkers who are clueless, humorless twits. Or Twits. Or Twats:

LOL, pinned tweet has "Comrade Trump" in Cyrillic. I have yet to meet a McResistance McCarthyite who supports Tulsi... go figure. It's almost like they're cool with the exact kind of reckless nuclear brinksmanship Tulsi warns against.

End the New Cold Warhttps://t.co/Pv8NwEX1uo

— Lucius (@luciusringwald) September 11, 2019

Same Twerker lied in another Tweet. Said that Gabbard had recently made a statement about Modi and met with Indian opposition leader. She met with the opposition long ago, and has had no statement about Modi, let alone about Kashmir in specific, on either of her Twitter accounts since the start of the month. No press releases on her Congressional website. Nothing on her campaign website.

The lying in general is bad enough. The fact that it's almost sociopathic in its bald-facedness is what makes it worse. That said, since she does a lot of interviews on conspiracy theory media outlets, it's not surprising.

This Twerker? Not the first of these I've run into before. I of course told this person and others on the chain that I am a Green and that they're humorless and clueless.

Other Twerkers? I fire back on Twitter when you make non-factual claims. And comments here are moderated.