Tulsi Gabbard is no peacenik

She went out of her way to condemn Trump as a 'warmonger,' but there isn't much daylight between her foreign policy position and his

Tulsi Gabbard
(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

If America is going to be a force for peace in the world, it needs to stop invading other countries for their own good. And, for America's own good, it also needs to stop cultivating nasty regimes. But ironically, the very politicos who are anti-war often become pro-dictator. Unfortunately, Democratic presidential contender Tulsi Gabbard, the congresswoman from Hawaii, is no different.

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, just like President 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 — which is no doubt why the former White House aide Stephen Bannon, the notorious architect of Trump's America First campaign, interviewed her for a position in the administration.

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Shikha Dalmia

Shikha Dalmia is a visiting fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University studying the rise of populist authoritarianism.  She is a Bloomberg View contributor and a columnist at the Washington Examiner, and she also writes regularly for The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. She considers herself to be a progressive libertarian and an agnostic with Buddhist longings and a Sufi soul.