Rep Tulsi Gabbard: End Illegal War Against Syrian Government of Assad, Focus on Destroying ISIS On CNN “New Day,” Rep. Tulsi Gabbard explained why it’s critical that the US end its illegal and counterproductive war to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad and instead ally itself with France, Russia, and other countries to focus on destroying ISIS and other Islamic extremists who have declared war on western civilization. Posted by Tulsi Gabbard on Sunday, November 22, 2015

Late last week, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) and Rep. Austin Scott (R-GA), two House Armed Services Committee members, introduced a bipartisan bill to “end U.S. efforts to overthrow the Syrian Arab Republic led by President Bashar al-Assad.”

In a press release, Rep. Gabbard, a veteran of the Iraq war and a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, condemned the United States government’s desire to remove Assad from power and said that the U.S should “ally ourselves with any countries willing to focus on destroying the Islamic extremists who pose a genuine threat to civilization.”

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Rep. Scott said that “our primary mission should be the war against ISIS, al Qaeda, and radical Islamic extremists that have operations both inside and outside of Syria and Iraq.” Scott said those groups “are currently threatening attacks on our homeland” and he expressed support for “eliminating these radical Islamic terrorists through any means necessary.” However, Scott noted that “working to remove Assad at this stage is counter-productive to what I believe our primary mission should be.”

“The U.S. is waging two wars in Syria. The first is the war against ISIS and other Islamic extremists, which Congress authorized after the terrorist attack on 9/11,” Gabbard said in a press release.

[pull_quote_center]The second war is the illegal war to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad. The war to overthrow Assad is counter-productive because it actually helps ISIS and other Islamic extremists achieve their goal of overthrowing the Syrian government of Assad and taking control of all of Syria—which will simply increase human suffering in the region, exacerbate the refugee crisis, and pose a greater threat to the world. Also, the war to overthrow Assad is illegal because Congress never authorized it.[/pull_quote_center]

In the press release, Gabbard listed ten reasons why she believes the United States should halt its attempt to overthrow Assad. Her first reason stated that “if we succeed in overthrowing the Syrian government of Assad, it will open the door for ISIS, al-Qaeda, and other Islamic extremists to take over all of Syria. There will be genocide and suffering on a scale beyond our imagination. These Islamic extremists will take over all the weaponry, infrastructure, and military hardware of the Syrian army and be more dangerous than ever before.”

Gabbard cautioned that “we should learn from our past mistakes in Iraq and Libya that U.S. wars to overthrow secular dictators (Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi) cause even more chaos and human suffering and open the door for Islamic extremists to take over in those countries.”

She also noted that “the money and weapons the CIA is providing to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad are going directly or indirectly into the hands of the Islamic extremist groups, including al-Qaeda affiliates, al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham, and others who are the actual enemies of the United States. These groups make up close to 90 percent of the so-called opposition forces, and are the most dominant fighters on the ground.”

Gabbard made similar remarks on CNN last month before the terror attacks in Paris, telling Wolf Blitzer that “by working towards overthrowing the Syrian government of Assad, we are not only strengthening our enemy- the Islamic extremists who will walk in and take over all of the country of Syria, right now they have about half of the country under their control- but it also put us in that position of a potential direct head-to-head conflict with Russia, which brings us to the brink of a potential larger conflict of a WWIII-type of situation.” She also criticized the government for providing arms to “our sworn enemies.”

In March, Ben Swann released a Truth in Media episode, The Origin of ISIS, that exposed how certain U.S. foreign policy decisions, including providing weapons to “rebels,” bolstered the rise of ISIS.