Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.
Right before Memorial Day Weekend, Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, announced her resignation. Her husband has a rare form of bone cancer, she said, which was the driver of her decision. President Trump praised her for her service.
What are we to make of this? I take Gabbard at her word that she’s deeply concerned about her husband’s health. But the announcement of her decision, on a Friday just before a long weekend, was meant to minimize media attention. For months now, Gabbard has been sidelined within the Trump administration. Her testimony that Iran was not actively pursuing a nuclear bomb put her at odds with Zionist hawks led by Bibi Netanyahu, who’ve been warning of an “imminent” nuclear device for the last forty years. The President himself declared he didn’t care what Gabbard thought about Iran and its nuclear ambitions; over time, it appears Gabbard was shunted aside as not sufficiently hawkish about Iran.
Which is a shame. Gabbard has shown herself to be an unconventional politician, somewhat of a maverick, and she’s paid the price for going against the Clinton machine, which smeared her as a dupe, wittingly or unwittingly, of Putin and the Russians. It got so bad for Tulsi that people were asking her on the campaign trail in 2020 if she was a traitor to her country. Politics is a dirty business, but I think even Tulsi may have been surprised at how dirty Hillary Clinton and the DNC got with their insinuations about her motives and her patriotism.
Many are disappointed that Gabbard didn’t resign for political cause — that she didn’t quit even earlier while calling out the Iran War as illegal, immoral, counterproductive, and unnecessary. We expect leaders to have strong principles, and I wish Tulsi had spoken out strongly against the war. Often, political insiders convince themselves to go along with bad policies in the hope of mitigating the worst aspects of them. They also may fear retribution, and the Trump/MAGA machine can certainly vie with the Clinton/DNC one for viciousness against perceived apostates.
Gabbard, again, has had an interesting career, navigating the DNC when it was dominated by the Clintons and serving the second Trump administration as it’s been dominated by Zionist/evangelical hawkishness. A tell-all book by Gabbard would truly be explosive, except I’m sure whatever she might produce would be heavily redacted.
Hopefully, her support of her husband will help him through a difficult health crisis. In her opposition to regime-change wars, in her service to her country, in her willingness to take unpopular stands, Gabbard has shown personal integrity and considerable courage. She’s not perfect, far from it, but few should doubt her resilience and her ethic of service.
