National Review defends the Tulsi Queen

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Tulsi Gabbard has served in the Hawaii Army National Guard since 2003 and has risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel. She understands what her current job requires. She helps present the best available intelligence to the commander in chief and gives him her best advice on whatever topic is on the table that day. Some days, he agrees with her. Some days — and on some big, consequential decisions! — he goes in the other direction. And when that happens, she says, “Yes, sir” and goes back to her office and back to doing her job.

She might strongly disagree with the decision, or she might even hate it. But she understands and accepts that in our system of government, the decision of using military force is made by the president, and once he’s given the order, you can either do your job, or resign, as Kent did. And so far, Gabbard has chosen to keep working, hoping that she’ll be able to steer the president in the right direction on the next decision.

In a Washington that is full of narcissistic egomaniacs and showboating windbags . . . accepting a president’s decision as final and not undermining its enactment feels like a refreshing breath of fresh air — honorable, even. (Some people claim Gabbard or her office leak a bunch, but those accusations are, so far, unproven.)

There will also be a lot of war critics who will want to paint Kent as a heroic conscientious objector while Gabbard is allegedly a shameless sellout. But in his confirmation hearing, Kent told the Senate Intelligence Committee, “American citizens inside our own borders and U.S. military personnel stationed abroad face a growing, not diminishing, terrorist threat. . . . Our brave men and women in uniform remain in harm’s way in the Middle East as Iranian-backed militant proxies continue Iran’s bidding across the region as they have for decades.” And then there’s the fact that in 2020, after the U.S. strike on Qasem Soleimani, Kent said of Iran, “We should crush their ballistic & nuke [capabilities] and get out of Iraq, with sanctions to follow.” He repeated that preferred approach a few days later.

Now suddenly, Kent says, “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby. . . . This was a lie and is the same tactic that the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq conflict that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women.” Wait, what happened to that Iranian threat to U.S. military personnel in the region? What happened to the threat of Iran’s ballistic and nuclear capabilities?

Either Kent was saying things he didn’t truly believe in his testimony under oath to the Senate, or he’s not saying what he really believes now.

Still, you must wonder if Gabbard is where she thought she would be, doing what she wanted to be doing at this moment. I wrote on December 13, 2024, “Considering that the job is a thankless, frustrating combination of heavy responsibility and limited power, if GOP senators really want to punish Gabbard, they’ll vote to confirm her.”

ADDENDUM: Many conservative figures and organizations marked the passing of David Keene, a legendary leader in the conservative movement and one of the key architects in the growth of CPAC, and the former president of the National Rifle Association. But strangely, two organizations either forgot, didn’t notice, or chose to not mark the passing of Keene: CPAC and the NRA.

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