Where have all the journalists gone?
Back in the day, I could turn on the news, read a newspaper and be given mostly accurate information.
As time passed, different media outlets started to be biased, and used as propaganda machines to push a specific narrative. How do we know this? because we can listen to two different networks, and get a very different take on the same situation. When the message diverges so much, something is clearly going wrong.
This leads to individuals to have to do their own research, to piece together the right context, in order to cut through the intended narrative and try to uncover the real facts.
Ana Kasparian from TYT has been outspoken in describing Tulsi Gabbard as not a progressive. Which is particularly strange as TYT calls itself the “home of the progressive movement”. Ana received quite a push back from the TYT audience for these views.
A day later, on March 25th she posts a YouTube video covering Tulsi.
Call me naive but I was hoping for fair reporting as Ana starts her segment saying that Tulsi is one of the more exciting democratic candidates.
And that this was not a hit piece on Tulsi.
But she immediately started to get her facts wrong. Tulsi was not deployed to Iraq twice. She was deployed once to Iraq, and once to Kuwait.
Ok, no biggie, we all make mistakes. But wait… it gets worse, much worse.
She immediately jumps how Aida Chavez from The Intercept reported that Tulsi has argued in support of the global war on terror.
We all know that the global war on terror has caused more much more destruction, and made the US less safe by encouraging terrorism around the world. But what do people use to base their point that Tulsi support these wars? They mainly refer to the following statement to the Hawaii Tribune-Hearld in 2016:
This quote when taken out of context would indeed suggest that Tulsi would be willing to continue wars around the world, as long as they were under the pretext of fighting terrorism. This could not be farther from the truth. Tulsi has a very clear vision of how to fight the “War on terror” in her own website.
1. We must immediately end the illegal and counterproductive war to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad.
2. We must defeat ISIS militarily.
3. There must be a political solution.
4. We must defeat ISIS and other Islamist militants ideologically.
Tulsi is accused of being “islamophobic” because she focuses too much on the islamic characteristic of these groups. There is a reason Muslim leaders applaud Tulsi’s stance of firmly define who those terrorists organizations are.
“ Congresswoman Gabbard rightly observes that the clear identification of the enemy and its ideology will actually be beneficial to the vast majority of Muslims who do not adhere to the cult-like sub-sect of Islam responsible for all Islamist terrorism in the world.” -LUBP Editorial (June 23rd 2016)
This is one of the reasons she is supported by the Muslim community, and was invited as the keynote speaker at a Muslims for peace conference (March 7th 2017).
Ana continues her concerns about Tulsi’s position in other major military operations like in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.
But forgets to include statements that Tulsi has made about these places, with clear emphasis in stopping the violence.
And how other service members with experience in those regions of the world support Tulsi’s approach.
Tulsi will finish a fight, if there are already enemies to the US, she will fight them, but as her record indicates, she will fully identify the enemy and then use the best weapons against them. In the case of Islamic terrorism by working with peaceful islamic groups that can more effectively IDEOLOGICALLY combat the more extremist views of Islam.
This does not require drone strikes, or regime change. It requires a strategy that Tulsi has been highlighting and apparently Ana has not been able to find or understand.
Ana argues that she disagrees with the use of drones (something Sanders also supports) and that she is troubled by Tulsi’s tactics like torture tactics. Where is this view coming from? From a 12/17/2014 video where Tulsi is asked is about the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture.
The report was approved on December 9th 2014, and it consisted of 6000 pages of details with 525 pages released to the public. Tulsi was very clear that she was CONFLICTED because at the time this question was asked, there were still issues about the report itself. The basis of Tulsi supporting Torture is because she later says that if she was POTUS she would do anything in her power to keep America safe.
Tulsi describes in her recent Status Coup interview with Jordan Chariton. How she hadn’t have a chance to read the report. But right after details of the report were made available, she voted in 2015 for HR 1735, including the amendment to the 2016 NDAA, codifying President’s Obama executive order banning enhanced interrogation/torture methods, and how as president she would continue to oppose the use of torture.
But what does Ana do? She keeps going over all the terrible things the CIA report uncovered, and shows the statement of John Brennan about the report that had just been released.
Ana links to a Fox News channel interview where she claims Tulsi was saying that none of the candidates were proposing policies that were harsh enough against Islamic extremism.
There is nothing in Tulsi’s response that would even imply that she wanted a “harsher” response to Islamic extremism, what she said that She “was disappointed to hear a lot of talk against ISIS but the reality on the ground in Syria today, is that if ISIS is defeated, Al-Qaeda’s affiliated group Jabhat Al-Nusra, is poised to take over all of Syria and create this emirate or caliphate”, and how it is important to understand the ideology of radicalism that fuels those extremist groups.
Tulsi is not asking for “harsher” responses, but more effective responses that defeat those extremist groups at an ideological, not only military level.
Then Ana continues with the, by now, old and tired “guilt by association” smear, that Tulsi is “LOVED” by Steve Bannon.
I will let Tulsi answer by herself that smear in the way only she can.
So in short. There are two options, and both are equally disturbing.
a) Ana has not done her research, and she could not find the answers to her own questions the way I just did.
or
b) She is aware of that content and she refused to include it.