What Does Tulsi Gabbard Believe?
>"All politicians must act as if they enjoy patriotic ceremonies, but Gabbard is one of the few who seem as if they were not acting. She is thirty-six, and has a knack for projecting both youthful joy and grownup gravitas. Her political profile is similarly hybrid. She is a fervent Bernie Sanders supporter with equally fervent bipartisan tendencies—known, roughly equally, for her concern for the treatment of veterans and her opposition to U.S. intervention abroad. She is also a vegetarian and a practicing Hindu—the first Hindu ever elected to Congress—as well as a lifelong surfer and an accomplished athlete. On Capitol Hill, she is often regarded as a glamorous anomaly: a Hawaiian action figure, fabulously out of place among her besuited colleagues. “She’s almost straight from central casting, if you need a heroine,” Van Jones, the progressive activist, says. Trey Gowdy, the South Carolina Republican, is one of her closest friends in Congress. He first spied her on the House floor, sitting on the Republican side of the aisle. “This sounds terrible to say, but it’s also true—you know, she’s cute,” he says. “So if you’re sitting on that side, and it’s a boring speech, you’re going to notice.” The night after Gabbard was elected, Rachel Maddow made a prediction on MSNBC: “She is on the fast track to being very famous.”
On the way to the ceremony, Finn stopped at her house so that Gabbard could change into her military uniform, which she had brought along, in a dry cleaner’s bag, as carry-on luggage. Finn gave her a motherly appraisal. “Do you have your headpiece?” she asked, then corrected herself. “Pardon me. I don’t know the proper terminology for military gear.”
Gabbard chuckled and offered the right word: “Cover.” She had hers, and soon she was standing at solemn attention at the Kauai Veterans Cemetery, where the graves were sprigged with American flags and a local Junior R.O.T.C. troop was lining the entrance. It was a hot but breezy day, with birds chirping and a few wild chickens strutting among the tombstones. There was a podium flanked by wreaths in front of a tiled mural depicting a mournful beach scene: a line of battlefield crosses, two empty boots, an upright rifle, pastel clouds in the distance.
Gabbard began with a personal tribute to those whose service had cost them their lives. “Like so many of you, I woke up this morning with a heavy heart,” she said. “Remembering that time in training, or downrange, when things were so crappy that all you could do was laugh, know that we had each other, and embrace the suck. We remember that last roll call, when their name was called with no response.” She talked about how she had never seen her father cry until the day she came home, unharmed, from Iraq. Anyone sitting close enough might have noticed that her eyes were gleaming. But she also sounded a note of political protest. “Too often we have found, throughout our country’s history, we have people in positions of power who make offhanded comments about sending a few thousand troops here, fifty thousand there, a hundred thousand there, intervening militarily here, or starting a war there—without seeming to understand or appreciate the cost of war,” she said. “If our troops are sent to fight a war, it must be the last option. Not the first.”
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https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/06/what-does-tulsi-gabbard-believe
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