In a presidential debate with nine candidates and one Beto O’Rourke on stage, it’s hard to stand out. So tonight, Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard leaned on her credentials as a military veteran and her reputation for restrained foreign policy, taking a hard stance on the Trump administration that’s sure to stand out.
She said:
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard calls out Trump’s “chicken hawk Cabinet” pic.twitter.com/ehq81YzuzP
— Axios (@axios) June 27, 2019
Now, Gabbard’s criticism of President Trump is somewhat unfair. As president, Trump has been fairly dovish, talking us down from the brink of war with North Korea, and making moves toward exiting our seemingly never-ending quagmires and conflicts in Middle Eastern countries such as Syria and Afghanistan.
Yet Gabbard is right to take aim at a few real hawks in Trump’s administration, whom she blasts as “chicken hawks.” Take national security adviser John Bolton, for example, the hawkish adviser who was a key architect of the failed Iraq War, and has pushed aggressive, dangerously interventionist stances toward North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela, but of course, never served himself.
An excerpt from the Los Angeles Times sums this up nicely:
Gabbard gets this. Some of the congresswoman’s record is questionable, and much of her policy platform is highly objectionable, but at least she has the veteran experience to back up her foreign policy stances. Maybe we should demand that the Trump officials constantly calling for war have to be the first ones to enlist — as Gabbard points out, they might not be so hawkish if it was their life on the line.
