INTERNATIONAL SYRIAN PREZ ASSAD NOT ENEMY OF US

Gabbard has previously defended her 2017 meeting with Syrian leader

WASHINGTON DC: Democratic presidential aspirant and the first Hindu lawmaker in the Congress Tulsi Gabbard has said that Syrian President Bashar al-assad is “not the enemy” of the US and the wartorn country does not pose a “direct threat” to America.

Gabbard, 37, who recently announced her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, has previously been criticised for meeting with Assad in 2017. The Syrian leader is believed to be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians in the ongoing brutal civil war.

“Assad is not the enemy of the United States because Syria does not pose a direct threat to the United States,” Gabbard, elected to the House of Representatives from Hawaii, said Wednesday on MSNBC.

When pressed over whether Assad, who has been accused of using chemical weapons on his own people over the course of a more than five year civil war, is an adversary of the US, Gabbard said “you can describe it however you want to describe it.

My point is that whether it is Syria or any of these other countries, we need to look at how their interests are counter to or aligned with ours,” she said.

When asked if she thought Assad was a good person, Gabbard said, “No, I don’t,” and asked if Russian President Vladimir Putin was an adversary to the US, she responded, “Yes.”

Gabbard has previously defended her 2017 meeting with Assad, saying American

leaders must meet with foreign

leaders “if we are serious about the pursuit of peace and securing our country.”

She said last month that there is no possibility for a “viable” peace agreement in the war-torn country unless Assad is part of the conversation.

Earlier, on Sunday, Tulsi Gabbard, the first Hindu lawmaker in the US Congress, officially launched her presidential campaign from her home state Hawaii on Sunday, promising to bend “the arc of history away from war and toward peace”.

Taking a dig at America’s foreign policy establishment in her campaign announcement, the four-time Democratic

lawmaker in the US House of Representatives from Hawaii blamed politicians in “ivory towers” for US’ involvement in costly armed conflicts abroad.

“We must stand against powerful politicians from both parties who sit in ivory towers thinking up new wars to wage and new places for people to die. Wasting trillions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives, undermining our economy and security, and destroying our middle class,” Gabbard said.

“These powerful politicians dishonor the sacrifices made by every one of our service members, and their families - they are the ones who pay the price for these wars,” she said.

Asserting that the foreign policy is depleting US’ resources and exhausting its military, the Hawaii lawmaker said she will work towards “bending the arc of history away from war and toward peace” and to achieve this it “will require every one of us to stand up against the military industrial complex and powerful, self-serving politicians who have a vested interest in perpetual war”.

Gabbard she will work towards building partnerships with other nations based on shared interests, leading with a foreign policy based not on conflict but on cooperation.

Other policy positions that the White House hopeful discussed included Medicare for all, criminal justice reform, environmental advocacy and the need to combat privacy infringement by big tech companies.

A former Iraq war veteran, 37-year-old Gabbard is a former Co-chair of the powerful India Caucus in the House of Representatives. She is the youngest Democratic leader to enter the 2020 presidential race.

The first ever Hindu lawmaker to be elected to the House of Representatives, Gabbard during her tenure in the Congress has established herself as an authority on national security and foreign policy issues.

She is among the four women who have thrown their hat into the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race.

The other three are Indianorigin Senator Kamala Harris from California and Senators Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts and Kirsten Gillibrand from New York.