Tulsi Gabbard’s Syria Stance: Stain on Her Record

There are very few actors in the militant drama unfolding inside Syria that we could plausibly call pro-Western. There was a time when that mantle would have been applicable to some of the forces attempting to dismantle the murderous Baathist regime in Damascus, but they were snuffed out. Bashar al-Assad’s forces shelled and starved them, and Vladimir Putin’s air force pummeled them into submission. All the while, an acquiescent West facilitated the depopulation of the areas those rebel groups disputed, after which it looked away while Assad’s armies established precisely the conditions that provided the regime with a new lease on life.

The despot and his apologists claimed when it was not true that the Syrian civil war was a binary conflict. The West had to choose between a bloody secular authoritarianism or savage jihadists (whom the Assad regime incubated). Now that this binary dynamic has prevailed, partly because of the Assad regime’s defenders’ advocacy, they have the gall to insist they were right all along.

About the Author

Noah Rothman

Noah Rothman is a senior writer at National Review. His third book, Blood and Progress: A Century of Left-Wing Violence, was published by Hachette in May 2026.

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There are very few actors in the militant drama unfolding inside Syria that we could plausibly call pro-Western. There was a time when that mantle would have been applicable to some of the forces attempting to dismantle the murderous Baathist regime in Damascus, but they were snuffed out. Bashar al-Assad’s forces shelled and starved them, and Vladimir Putin’s air force pummeled them into submission. All the while, an acquiescent West facilitated the depopulation of the areas those rebel groups disputed, after which it looked away while Assad’s armies established precisely the conditions that provided the regime with a new lease on life.

The despot and his apologists claimed when it was not true that the Syrian civil war was a binary conflict. The West had to choose between a bloody secular authoritarianism or savage jihadists (whom the Assad regime incubated). Now that this binary dynamic has prevailed, partly because of the Assad regime’s defenders’ advocacy, they have the gall to insist they were right all along.

About the Author

Noah Rothman

Noah Rothman is a senior writer at National Review. His third book, Blood and Progress: A Century of Left-Wing Violence, was published by Hachette in May 2026.