Issues of war and peace were barely mentioned in last night’s Democratic debates. Maybe it was the moderators’ fault, but the candidates didn’t seem too eager to talk either.
The ongoing U.S.-sponsored wars (“interventions”) in Syria, Yemen, and Somalia went unmentioned. Only two candidates spoke about Afghan war, now in its 19th year. Cory Booker and Tulsi Gabbard, both said they would withdraw U.S. troops, though Booker said he would not impose an “artificial deadline,” which is what Bush, Obama, and Trump officials have said while not withdrawing.
Joe Biden apologized for supporting the Iraq war and Gabbard doubled down on her criticism.
Only three candidates spoke about Iran, which is suffering under harsh U.S. sanctions and has shot down a U.S. surveillance drone. Andrew Yang, Jay Inslee, and Bill DeBlasio called for de-escalation of President Trump’s policy of provocation. When DeBlasio insisted on saying “we have to stop the march to war,” he was shushed and the foreign policy discussion was over.
Here’s the totality of the exchange.
TAPPER: Thank you, Governor Inslee. I want to turn to foreign policy, if we can. Senator Booker, there are about 14,000 U.S. services members in Afghanistan right now. If elected, will they still be in Afghanistan by the end of your first year in office?
BOOKER: Well, first of all, I want to say very clearly that I will not do foreign policy by tweet as Donald Trump seems to do all the time. A guy that literally tweets out that we’re pulling our troops out before his generals even know about it is creating a dangerous situation for our troops in places like Afghanistan.
And so I will bring our troops home and I will bring them home as quickly as possible, but I will not set during a campaign an artificial deadline. I will make sure we do it, we do it expeditiously, we do it safely, to not create a vacuum that’s ultimately going to destabilize the Middle East and perhaps create the environment for terrorism and for extremism to threaten our nation.
TAPPER: Congresswoman Gabbard, you’re the only veteran on this stage. Please respond.
GABBARD: This is real in a way that’s very difficult to convey in words. I was deployed to Iraq in 2005 during the height of the war where I served in a field medical unit where every single day I saw the high cost of war. Just this past week, two more of our soldiers were killed in Afghanistan.
My cousin is deployed to Afghanistan right now. Nearly 300 of our Hawaii National Guard soldiers are deployed to Afghanistan, 14,000 servicemembers are deployed there. This is not about arbitrary deadlines. This is about leadership, the leadership I will bring to do the right thing to bring our troops home, within the first year in office, because they shouldn’t have been there this long.
For too long, we’ve had leaders who have been arbitrating foreign policy from ivory towers in Washington without any idea about the cost and the consequence, the toll that it takes on our servicemembers, on their families. We have to do the right thing, end these wasteful regime change wars, and bring our troops home.
(APPLAUSE)
TAPPER: Thank you. Thank you, Congresswoman.
Mr. Yang, Iran has now breached the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal after President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal, and that puts Iran closer to building a nuclear weapon, the ability to do so, at the very least. You’ve said if Iran violates the agreement, the U.S. would need to respond, quote, “very strongly.” So how would a President Yang respond right now?
YANG: I would move to de-escalate tensions in Iran, because they’re responding to the fact that we pulled out of this agreement. And it wasn’t just us and Iran. There were many other world powers that were part of that multinational agreement. We’d have to try and reenter that agreement, renegotiate the timelines, because the timelines now don’t make as much sense.
But I’ve signed a pledge to end the forever wars. Right now, our strength abroad reflects our strength at home. What’s happened, really? We’ve fallen apart at home, so we elected Donald Trump, and now we have this erratic and unpredictable relationship with even our longstanding partners and allies.
What we have to do is we have to start investing those resources to solve the problems right here at home. We’ve spent trillions of dollars and lost thousands of American lives in conflicts that have had unclear benefits. We’ve been in a constant state of war for 18 years. This is not what the American people want. I would bring the troops home, I would de-escalate tensions with Iran, and I would start investing our resources in our own communities.
(APPLAUSE)
TAPPER: Governor Inslee, your response?
INSLEE: Well, I think that these are matters of great and often difficult judgment. And there is no sort of primer for presidents to read. We have to determine whether a potential president has adequate judgment in these decisions.
I was only one of two members on this panel today who were called to make a judgment about the Iraq war. I was a relatively new member of Congress, and I made the right judgment, because it was obvious to me that George Bush was fanning the flames of war.
Now we face similar situations where we recognize we have a president who would be willing to beat the drums of war. We need a president who can stand up against the drums of war and make rational decisions. That was the right vote, and I believe it.
TAPPER: Thank you. Thank you, Governor. Vice President Biden, he was obviously suggesting that you made the wrong decision and had bad judgment when you voted to go to war in Iraq as a U.S. senator.
BIDEN: I did make a bad judgment, trusting the president saying he was only doing this to get inspectors in and get the U.N. to agree to put inspectors in. From the moment “shock and awe” started, from that moment, I was opposed to the effort, and I was outspoken as much as anyone at all in the Congress and the administration.
Secondly, I was asked by the president in the first meeting we had on Iraq, he turned and said, Joe, get our combat troops out, in front of the entire national security team. One of the proudest moment of my life was to stand there in Al-Faw Palace and tell everyone that we’re coming — all our combat troops are coming home.
TAPPER: Thank you.
BIDEN: I opposed the surge in Afghanistan, this long overdue — we should have not, in fact, gone into Afghanistan the way…
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: Thank you, Mr. Vice President. I want to bring in…
INSLEE: Mr. Vice President — I’d like to comment.
TAPPER: I would like to bring in the person on the stage who served in Iraq, Governor — I’m sorry, Congresswoman Gabbard. Your response to what Vice President Biden just said.
GABBARD: We were all lied to. This is the betrayal. This is the betrayal to the American people, to me, to my fellow servicemembers. We were all lied to, told that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, was working with Al Qaida, and that this posed a threat to the American people.
So I enlisted after 9/11 to protect our country, to go after those who attacked us on that fateful day, who took the lives of thousands of Americans.
The problem is that this current president is continuing to betray us. We were supposed to be going after Al Qaida. But over years now, not only have we not gone after Al Qaida, who is stronger today than they were in 9/11, our president is supporting Al Qaida.
LEMON: Thank you, Congresswoman.
DE BLASIO: We didn’t talk about Iran.
LEMON: Let’s talk about — thank you, please.
DE BLASIO: We didn’t talk about Iran.
LEMON: Please.
DE BLASIO: We’re on the march to war in Iran right now, and we blew by it.
LEMON: Please, Mayor. The rules — please follow the rules.
DE BLASIO: I respect the rules, but we have to stop this march to war in Iran.
LEMON: Mayor, thank you very much. We’re going on…
DE BLASIO: And the Democratic Party has to stand up for it.
