Tulsi Gabbard Instagram – Quote 2/2 “I came from a political background, and I understood how too many of our politicians just don’t get it. They don’t understand who pays the price for their decisions. We saw too many of those politicians come visit us there in Iraq, get the photo op, shake hands, pat people on the back, maybe stay for 24 hours, and then move on. And when they got back to Washington… it just made me laugh and it made me sick at the same time. I heard politicians say, ‘I’ve been to a combat zone 37 times and I know what this is like.’ No, you don’t know anything about what it’s like. So don’t even try to pretend… go and talk to the people who live this experience. Look into their eyes, look into the eyes of their families, and understand the gravity of the decisions that you’re making. Congress has a constitutional responsibility to declare war. Congress has abdicated on that responsibility for a very long time, but that is the constitutionally dictated responsibility of Congress. Know the impact of that before you make that decision. Know the impact of the decisions that you make about training and readiness, taking care of families, and taking care of veterans. What happens here at home when it’s time to care for the people who have made that decision to raise their right hand and take an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and who are willing to sacrifice their life to do so? The experiences of my first deployment and the many lessons that I personally learned are what drove me to be in a position to somehow, some way, impact the decisions that are made in Washington — about our military, about foreign policy, about our veterans. I knew my own unique experiences would make better informed decisions than those that were being made at the time.” — LTC Tulsi Gabbard (Army, OIF Veteran) @tulsigabbard