Only if you're still in the habit of telling people "see what you made me do."
[Hot Air] Between this and last month’s weak-ass cop-out on the big impeachment vote, she’s repaying her righty fans richly for their inexplicable political interest in her.
There was suspense surrounding her vote on impeachment, though. There was no suspense as to whether she’d agree with Pete Buttigieg that moral culpability for the Ukrainian jet shootdown is shared between Iran and the United States even though it was Iran’s own negligence that brought the jet down, with not a single bullet fired that evening by the U.S. A rule of thumb that will stand you in good stead during Gabbard interviews: When offered an opportunity to deflect blame from Iran or its proxies (notably Bashar Assad) for the region’s problems, she’ll take it every time.
If it were a simple matter of her wanting to communicate that war inevitably leads to escalation and therefore should be avoided, she could have made that point without involving the jet. Their proxies attacked our embassy; then we attacked their general; then they attacked our air bases; then we sanctioned them; and now it’s their turn to retaliate for that. People have died and more people will. She could have bracketed the calamity with the jet as something different, an example of "the fog of war" and Iranian incompetence. But ardent doves like Gabbard are a mirror image of ardent hawks like Lindsey Graham in that their urgency to advance their position leads them easily into demagoguery of domestic opponents, even when those opponents are allies on unrelated issues. Graham votes with Mike Lee and Rand Paul on most business before the Senate but that didn’t stop him from accusing them of "empowering the enemy" by trying to assert Congress’s constitutional power over declaring war. Gabbard has become MAGA Nation’s favorite Democrat for her isolationism and her willingness to break with party orthodoxy on some issues (e.g., she believes in borders) but that doesn’t stop her here from endorsing the Buttigieg view of Trump’s culpability. |