Tulsi Fails Her Life’s Biggest Moment

Betraying An Entire Career Narrative To Lie Us Into Her WWIII Scenario

Article by Mike Prysner

Author’s note: Less than an hour after posting this article, Trump announced the first round in a US bombing campaign on Iran. Gabbard now bears responsibility for the consequences ahead.

This should have been the culmination of Tulsi Gabbard’s 20-year political career. Instead she has become the very thing that career was purportedly built to stop: a key propagandist for a war that would sacrifice American and civilian lives for nothing.

Tulsi has been a lot of things over her pursuit of power; starting as a young anti-gay crusader, then a pro-gay generic Democrat, then a pro-M4A Bernie surrogate, then an anti-M4A Bernie challenger, then a heartfelt Biden endorser, then an anti-Biden independent, and finally a MAGA Trump loyalist.

But the one thing that has remained consistent in her rebrand-after-rebrand is presenting herself as the anti-war politician. You could trust her because it was personal for her. She knew the true cost of war.

It’s her whole lore. A solemn mission to prevent another Iraq based on her transformative experiences there.

The big transition story from her deployment, which she says made her so firmly anti-war, was this:

“The very first task I had every morning was to go through a list, name by name, of every American casualty and injury that occurred in the previous 24 hours … And knowing that behind every one of those names are loved ones, parents, children, husbands, wives… and it’s why I am so deeply committed to doing everything I possibly can do to make sure that not a single one of our men and women in uniform has their life sacrificed in pursuit of wars that have nothing to do with keeping the American people safe.”

That’s not a one-off story; it’s her central narrative. Her core identity. It’s what she went on news media over and over again for years to comment on. A career laden with decrying “warmongers.”

Now, just four months into a key cabinet position (which she spent her years out of office campaigning for, even writing an entire book advocating for it on the basis of being able to prevent WWIII), we are on the eve of the very specific war she has warned about.

A war that she had repeatedly hammered Trump on for getting too close to. A war that she previously said would make the Iraq war “look like a cake walk” and “take far more American lives.”

A war based on another lie about a preemptive strike being imperative because, despite no evidence why, “we cannot wait for the final proof–the smoking gun–that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

“A war that has no frontlines, total chaos, engulfs the whole region, is not contained within Iran or Iraq but would extend to Syria and Lebanon and Israel across the region, setting us up in a situation where, in Iraq, we lost over 4,000 of my brothers and sisters in uniform. A war with Iran would take far more American lives.” - Tulsi Gabbard, 2019

She sold herself as someone unafraid to challenge power: challenging her party’s president to speak her mind about Syria; quitting as Vice-Chair of the DNC to expose their corruption; hitting Kamala Harris hard on the debate stage; quitting the Democratic party to prove that they have strayed from their values.

Imagine if Tulsi was who she told us she was that whole time–imagine if she had been genuine, and not just a savvy, opportunistic brand-builder.

Imagine, in this monumental moment of ramp-up for a catastrophic war based on lies, that the Director of National Intelligence stood up and contradicted the propaganda narrative. Noble truth-telling that got her fired, or quitting in protest.

It would crumble Trump’s entire basis for rushing to war: “We must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” It would be difficult for the Administration to recover from such a public fallout, where there are already fissures in his base and advisors.

It would be a real and tangible break on the war drive, and cement her in history as the type of hero we needed in 2003. The one she has built a career on being.

Tulsi had been silent on the matter since the Trump-Israel bombing of Tehran began, leading to rumors that she was playing her role as an internal dissenter.

But now she has finally spoken out, on June 20 tweeting from her official Director of National Intelligence account (and contradicting her testimony in Congress just two months ago):

“America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks.”

There it is. The rationale for America to go to war with Iran immediately, from the mouth of the top intelligence official–and giving credence to Trump’s timeline on directly striking Iran within two weeks.

Her career has culminated in this moment, and she has chosen war. How quickly she offered herself up as the new Colin Powell, selling this generation’s WMD.

A smart move for Trump and the neocons to bring her in to play to a “peacemaker” brand while having her on deck to sell the war they have been planning for a while.

She knows what she has to say and do to remain in power. Now everyone knows she was always a grifter with selfish motives. That her whole story about sobbing over the names of American casualties, setting her on a mission to prevent it from happening again, was utter bullshit in a quest for power and popularity. A craven sociopath willing to drop her supposed life's purpose in service of Trump, Netanyahu and, most importantly, herself.

“I am so deeply committed to doing everything I possibly can do to make sure that not a single one of our men and women in uniform has their life sacrificed in pursuit of wars that have nothing to do with keeping the American people safe.”

I never believed it. But at least someone was saying it. Now she has lent her knowing-the-cost-of-war credibility to selling a new one.

If the war happens I wonder if she will wake up everyday and read the names of the dead again knowing that, this time, she helped kill them all.

—

Please join an Emergency Protest Against War with Iran by finding a protest near you.