Before she became a progressive darling for endorsing Sanders, Gabbard became a conservative darling for relentlessly hawking the idea — later popularized by Trump — that Obama's foreign policy was failing because he refused to use the term "Islamic extremism," or some variation of it.
From 2014 onward, Gabbard appeared regularly on Fox News to lambast the Obama administration for avoiding the phrase. In
one interview, she told the host that "the vast majority of terrorist attacks conducted around the world for over the last decade have been conducted by groups who are fueled by this radical Islamic ideology," a statement that may be
technically true due to the violence and instability plaguing Middle Eastern countries, but is wildly misleading considering that non-Muslims make up the vast, vast majority of terrorist perpetrators in both
Europe and the
United States.
In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings in January 2015,
Gabbard complained on Fox News that by "not using this term 'Islamic extremism' and clearly identifying our enemies," the administration couldn't "come up with a very effective strategy to defeat that enemy." She
told Neil Cavuto that "this isn't about one specific group," but about "this radical Islamic ideology that is fueling this," and that it needed to be defeated "militarily and ideologically." She
characterized Obama's refusal to "recognize" the enemy as "mind-boggling" and "troubling."
And it wasn't just on Fox. Gabbard took her message to any network or outlet that would have her. On CNN, she
called Kerry's refusal to use the term "unfortunate and disturbing." In an
interview with the Hill, she stressed that radical Islam was at the heart of the problem, necessitating "a simultaneous ideological strategy" to defeat terrorists.
The Right was smitten. Breitbart ran
article after
article trumpeting her
criticisms, and former US representative Allen West
praised Gabbard for "dar[ing] to challenge Obama."
In February 2015, Gabbard had the chance to question Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Vincent Stewart. She asked him (while clearly fishing for a particular answer) about the debate over "how this ideology, how this motivation, must be identified" and what "common elements" existed among different Islamic terrorist groups, including ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Boko Haram. She then
went on Fox and reported that Stewart had "identified very clearly that it is this radical Islamic ideology that is fueling" these groups.
But Gabbard had heavily distorted what
Stewart actually said. While he did call ISIS "a radical ideology that must be countered with a moderate ideology," he also pointed out that the common elements that had produced such groups were "ungoverned states, weak government institution, economic instability, poverty."
This was par for the course for Gabbard, who regularly used her TV appearances to brush off, even mock, alternative explanations for terrorism. After Kerry
gave a speech at Davos stressing the importance of acknowledging the various drivers of extremism — noting that some extremist fighters "are lured by basic, material considerations" like "the promise of regular meals, a paycheck," while others are motivated by the chance "to escape boredom" and "be lured by a false sense of success" — Gabbard tore into him on CNN.
"This is completely missing the point," she said, calling it a "huge mistake" to think "that somehow, okay, well, look if we give them $10,000 and give them a nice place to live, that somehow they're not going to be engaged in this fighting." She cited Osama bin Laden as an example, a "multi-millionaire who left his mansions, went and lived in the desert because of this radical ideology." She
reappeared on CNN a month later, denying that "if we just go in and alleviate poverty, if we go in and create jobs and increase opportunity," it would help solve the problem.
Naturally, it wasn't long before she appeared on
Bill Maher's program, where the two bonded over their mutual distrust of "Islamic extremism" and their disagreement with Kerry's comments. After agreeing with Maher that it was "crazy" Obama didn't want to use the two magic words, Gabbard reiterated her point: "Give them a big house, give them a skateboard, send them on their way. You think that's going to solve the problem? It's not."
