United States President-elect Donald Trump is standing behind Tulsi Gabbard, his pick to be director of national intelligence. Like several of Trump’s nominees, former Democratic congresswoman Gabbard is controversial in D.C.-insider circles, and understandably so; she’s skeptical of the political establishment, often criticizes foreign policy and was apparently subject to surveillance and put on a terrorist watch list because of her dissident ways. In other words, she’s a rather promising nominee for an incoming administration that wants to completely revamp government institutions that desperately need reform.
Asked this week by NBC’s Kristen Welker if he has confidence in Gabbard despite objections raised in certain circles to her past actions and positions, Trump responded, “I do. I mean, she’s a very respected person.”
Trump was specifically asked about two meetings Gabbard had in 2017 with then-Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Now in exile, al-Assad and his relationships with American politicians shouldn’t be much of a worry anymore, but he plays a part in the official panic over Gabbard’s views on foreign policy.
In 2019, former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton famously called Gabbard a “Russian asset.” Gabbard, a veteran of the Iraq war, aroused Clinton’s ire with her anti-interventionism in foreign policy matters and criticism of the political establishment and its hawkishness during the course of a short-lived campaign for her party’s presidential nomination.
“There are brutal dictators in the world. Assad of Syria is one of them. That does not mean the U.S. should be waging regime-change wars around the world,” Gabbard told CNN in early 2019. Her long-standing fears of Islamist extremism led her to consider al-Assad a less-bad alternative to a potential fundamentalist regime.
Gabbard returned Clinton’s slight by calling her “the queen of warmongers” and the “embodiment of corruption.” It’s unsurprising that the two no longer share a political party.
Gabbard’s dissent from establishment orthodoxy doesn’t stop at military matters. In 2020, she joined with libertarian-leaning Republican Thomas Massie, from Kentucky, to call on the U.S. government to cease its persecution of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Assange ran afoul of the U.S. government when he published leaked documents revealing embarrassing details about official misconduct in Iraq and elsewhere.
“Julian Assange published information that exposed lies and abuses of power at the highest levels of our government,” Gabbard commented at the time. “His indictment under the Espionage Act sends a chilling message to every member of the media and all Americans.”
She also called for charges against Edward Snowden to be dropped, saying, “If it wasn’t for Snowden, the American people would never have learned the (National Security Agency) was collecting phone records and spying on Americans.”
Snowden has been stranded in Russia since the U.S. government blocked his ability to go anywhere else. The Bolivian president’s airplane was even forced to land in Austria in 2013 on suspicions that Snowden was aboard. Snowden’s home-in-exile frequently leads to supporters of the domestic-spying whistleblower being labelled “Russian assets” by fans of the security state.
Gabbard, needless to say, is not a fan of the security state. In fact, she’s so deeply embedded on the security state’s naughty list that federal air marshal whistleblowers revealed she’s been subjected to government surveillance and added to the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) Quiet Skies terrorist watch list. That involves extra scrutiny — some might call it harassment — every time she flies.
Gabbard calls the surveillance “clearly an act of political retaliation” for criticizing unsuccessful Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and the political establishment.
According to the TSA, Quiet Skies focuses “on travellers who may present an elevated risk to aviation security.”
The American Civil Liberties Union objects that the TSA uses “secret criteria” that don’t necessarily involve wrongdoing when subjecting people to the Quiet Skies program. It criticizes the program for expending “the time and focus of federal officers while at the same time threatening our civil liberties.”
Gabbard may be the first person designated for heightened and, probably, retaliatory scrutiny by the security state to ever be empowered to investigate her tormentors’ activities and correct their abuses. Knowing just how nasty, arbitrary and intrusive the various agencies that make up the intelligence community can be, she’ll have both the motive and the opportunity to make the nation’s misbehaving domestic spooks change their ways.
That’s not to say that Gabbard doesn’t have her flaws. Her skepticism towards official U.S. government policy and the political establishment has sometimes led her to be credulous, or at least incautious, in other directions.
After Russia invaded Ukraine, Gabbard publicly fretted about U.S.-funded “biolabs” in Ukraine from which “deadly pathogens” might escape in wartime.
Earlier, she said she was “skeptical” of claims that Syria’s government, which had a documented history of brutality, used chemical weapons against its people.
Gabbard’s anti-interventionism occasionally seems to lead her to miss the main moral point in conflicts.
But as the director of national intelligence, Gabbard would have responsibility for reining in an intelligence establishment that has spied on U.S. citizens and allies, lied about the spying, targeted journalists who reveal government misconduct and, importantly, retaliated against public figures who criticize powerful government officials and their policies. That Gabbard herself is one such figure gives her strong motivation to shake things up if she wins confirmation from the Senate.
The U.S. government is a huge, blundering, and abusive Leviathan that needs to be reduced in size, stripped of power and reformed in its conduct. As a critic of the system, Gabbard shows real promise when it comes to helping to implement those much-needed changes.
National Post