Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard struck back at those who attacked her for criticizing President Donald Trump's airstrike on Syria, referring to the war in Iraq as a lesson for committing military forces too quickly.
"We need to learn from Iraq and Libya — wars that were propagated as necessary to relieve human suffering, but actually increased human suffering many times over," Gabbard, D-Hawaii, a major in the Army National Guard and veteran of two tours of duty in the Middle East, told The Hill in an email.
"I and thousands of my brothers- and sisters-in-arms went to war in Iraq based on false intelligence and lies from our leaders — our president, military and political leaders. We should have been skeptical then, and we weren't," she wrote. "The cost was thousands of American lives and trillions of dollars down the drain. What to speak of millions of non-American lives."
Last Thursday, Gabbard called the airstrike, ordered in retaliation for alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government, "short-sighted" and "reckless."
Several prominent Democrats took umbrage with her criticism.
"I think it's outrageous," former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean said on MSNBC on Sunday in response to a question about Gabbard's questioning if Assad was behind the use of chemical weapons.
"There's a long well-known history, both in our intelligence community, Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders. Every single one of these agencies has said that Assad is using chemical weapons. He's a barbarian, he's murdered half a million of his own people."
Earlier that weekend, Dean and Center for American Progress head Neera Tanden voiced their displeasure with Gabbard on Twitter.
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