@hightor,
Quote:Cue up the wailing violins — so that makes her immune from criticism? A veteran can be wrong. A patriot can be misguided. There's nothing about serving one's country overseas that gives someone a lifetime license to spew any opinion and have it taken seriously.
Not that you will or should care but I have to say I am very disappointed in your response to the shameful calumny directed at Gabbard.
I happen to agree with you 100% concerning "criticism" of a military veteran and I have expressed the same view previously in this forum.
Gabbard's service hasn't earned her immunity from criticism of her views, her statements, or her actions. What it should earn her though is a presumption that she is a patriot. Acting as a collaborative Russian Asset; in accordance with the furtherance of Russian interests is treason. Treason is, perhaps, the most heinous of non-violent crimes. No one should be accused of treason without substantive evidence of their treachery and least of all someone who has put all they have at risk to serve the nation they are accused of betraying.
Please spare me any disingenuous nonsense about Clinton alleging she is an
unwitting asset. You don't
groom a dupe.
Progressives, and their members in the Democrat party, apparently have decided to add
traitor to their favored stock of epithets. Right now they seem to be in the focus group testing stage and prefer to employ the euphemistic "Russian Asset" or "Putin Asset," but just as "prejudiced" and "intolerant" led to "racist" and racist led to
neo-Nazi and
White Supremacist, "XXXX Asset" will lead to
traitor. It obviously already has with President Trump, but as we all know he really is a traitor, so that's OK.
Anyone arguing that these attacks against Gabbard are merely
political fastballs has forfeited any right to express outrage over
anything any Republican (including Trump) says about anyone. Everything and anything spewed by a Tribal Elder need not and should not be defended.
Donald Trump had every reason and right to consider John McCain a political enemy, and while the liberal media saw his opposition to the president as
heroic (McCain foolishly spent much of his political career courting the approval of the liberal news media - even after they predictably turned on him when he ran for POTUS) a great many Republicans saw it as petty and driven by a bitter personal animus towards a crude upstart who refused to defer to him. Nevertheless...Trump's questioning McCain's courage during his Vietnam service was reprehensible, and I expressed that view at the time.
I would feel better about Democrats and progressives if they all flatly condemned Clinton's slander, and many have, but I certainly appreciate the reluctance and difficulty in criticizing a Tribal Elder and understand why many might feel the need to duck the matter. What I find so objectionable are the widespread attempts to somehow excuse Clinton's accusation or reframe it in a way that masks its clear meaning and intent. What I find loathsome are those who have echoed and amplified it, and without offering any more evidence than the Clinton hag did, which is to say
none.
Let's keep in mind that the defamation is being directed not at Donald Trump, Mitch McConnel or anyone Democrats can legitimately consider
political enemies Tulsi Gabbard is a progressive Democrat. She had the temerity to endorse Bernie Sanders over Clinton in 2016 and The Hag never forgets being
wronged. Clinton is not running in 2020 (at least not yet) and if she was, Gabbard would be no threat to her chances (although with this magilla she could be). I can't tell who Clinton's favorite candidate is, but she will never support anyone who isn't in the top tier and those who are in that position have nothing to fear from Gabbard.
Gabbard had previously announced she would not run as a 3rd Party Candidate and no one has offered any evidence to suggest that prior to the Hag's attack she had changed her mind.
No matter how you slice it, and how cynical you may want to be, there is nothing to be gained in terms of the politics of the 2020 presidential race to justify these attacks (Clinton is not alone with them).
This was Clinton happily settling an old score with someone she despises for not supporting her. It is a message from the Democratic wing of the DC Establishment that has for decades been a vital partner in America's Military-Industrial Complex:
Don't mess with militaristic foreign policy!
The Republican wing has sent the same message to Donald Trump. Does anyone really think that Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham, et al give a good God damn about the Kurds in Syria? If you want to see a living embodiment of the Republican Establishment you need to look no further than the Bush Family. Poppy and his son George both gave us Middle East wars although at least Poppy was wise enough to allow Colin Powell to run his. Poppy screwed the Iraqi Kurds far worse than Trump has screwed their Syrian brethren but was there a hue and cry among Republicans on the Hill at the time? Nope, and guess what? The screwed Kurds let bygones be bygones and joined us in W's war against Saddam. Does anyone think that the situation of the Iraqi Kurds had any bearing on Obama's decision to withdraw? If our withdrawal meant significantly increased danger for the Iraqi Kurds, we would have still left and the Kurds would have been screwed a second time in Iraq.
I've no doubt our fighting men and women on the ground in Syria care deeply about a betrayal of the Kurds they have fought with side by side, but the Pentagon brass and the DC Establishment? Please.
A difference for the Military-Industrial Complex between this comparatively puny withdrawal from Syria and the much more significant one from Iraq is Hillary Clinton. HRC was giddy over getting to display her chops in Libya and while I'm not suggesting she and not Barrack Obama ran US foreign policy during their time together, it's pretty tough to discount her influence. Despite his campaign promises, by the time he left office, neither the Afghan War nor our military involvement in Iraq had come to an end, and there was active US military involvement in Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, and Syria.
A difference is that Trump is unpredictable, fundamentally a non-interventionist, and bound and determined to make good on all of his campaign promises. So when he signaled that he was content with turning over the Syria mess to those who wanted a war, the GOP Establishment wing of the MIC went into action.
Tulsi Gabbard is not going to become POTUS, but her non-interventionist view resonates with Americans both Republican and Democratic. The politicians and generals are always far more keen on going to war than the American people and the MIC doesn't need Republican and Democrats, in any way, teaming up to move toward isolation, so it wouldn't be surprising if, with the help of an old friend with a personal grudge, it chose Gabbard to make an example of.
Would Putin love to see the US retreat from the world stage into Fortress America First? Of course, he would, but just as Gabbard's military service doesn't render her immune from criticism, neither does the fact that her views on foreign policy might be to Russia's short term advantage render her a Russian Asset, Putin Stooge, or traitor.
