My, how things can change on a dime. Trump’s assassination of Qasem Soleimani may just be what gets us into a war with Iran, not to mention a renewed and expanded war in Iraq against perhaps some of the very same Iraqi troops we’ve trained and equipped. Yet another costly war in the Middle East that goes counter to US national security interests and will, in fact, make things much worse. Will we now seek regime change in Iran? Engage in a little adventuresome nation building there? How perfectly predictable. Suddenly, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren and even Bernie Sanders seem irrelevant, passé.

And Tulsi Gabbard? This is what she’s been running on almost exclusively from day one. She owns this issue. No one else. Now, it is up to her not only to criticize Trump and the hawkish policies pushed by the military industrial complex and the inside-the-Beltway pundits and media cheerleaders but, more importantly, to explain clearly and concisely what she would do differently in a similar situation. It is not enough for her to repeat how she believes these kind of Hillary-type paranoid warmongering policies are spelling the ruin of the United States. She must point to and elaborate a thoughtful alternative paradigm and how she would manage to implement it.