Story highlights Tulsi Gabbard: I served in Iraq, know cost of war. U.S. on path to intervention in Syria without a plan. We need judgment, foresight

She says she's resigned her DNC post to support Bernie Sanders; he'll bring peace, prosperity, be trustworthy commander-in-chief

Tulsi Gabbard is the United States Representative for Hawaii's 2nd Congressional District. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) Every four years, we make a choice about who leads our country. It's a choice that can determine whether our nation goes to war. As a veteran of two Middle East deployments, I know firsthand the cost of war.

When I served in Iraq with a medical unit, one of my daily responsibilities was to go through a list of every injury and casualty in the theater of operations and make sure our troops were cared for. The names I saw every day were those of my brothers and sisters in uniform, those who carry the indelible wounds of war. Some of them never came home. All of them sacrificed for all of us.

Tulsi Gabbard

Our interventionist wars in Iraq and Libya have cost us trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives; and al Qaeda, ISIS, and other terrorist organizations are still strong.

Today, America is again on a path of interventionism without a plan. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Syria, where we are supporting rebel groups allied with al Qaeda, ISIS and other terrorist organizations.

We are spending billions of dollars to overthrow the Syrian government in a war that has led to hundreds of thousands of Syrians being killed or injured and a refugee crisis like we've not seen in decades.