presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard.

This is the full interview.

If you have a short attention span like

I do you can check out the six-minute version

we posted on JohnStossel.com.

But the entire interview is interesting, so here it is.

We started on an area where we agree:

endless wars.

She often says she knows the cost of war.

So I asked her, what do you mean?

I am a soldier.

I've been serving the Army National Guard

now for over 16 years,

and deployed twice to the Middle East.

Served in Congress now for nearly seven years

on the Foreign Affairs Committee,

the Armed Services Committee, and the

Homeland Security Committee.

And so, from both perspectives,

understand the importance of our national security.

And as a soldier,

I served in a field medical unit in Iraq in 2005,

during the height of the war.

Our camp was about 40 miles north of Baghdad.

And I mean, it was something every day

that we all experienced firsthand,

the terribly high human cost of war.

Of our fellow soldiers,

friends of ours who were killed in combat

and the cost and the toll that continues now,

with veterans coming home with visible and

invisible wounds, dealing with post traumatic stress-

You've said the best way to honor our troops

is to make combat the last option.

We don't?

We have to honor our service men and women

by only sending them on missions that are

worthy of their sacrifice.

Now like so many Americans,

after Al-Qaeda attacked us on 9/11

I made the decision to join our military.

To enlist to be able to go after and defeat

those who attacked us on that day.

To defeat that great evil that visited us.

But unfortunately, since that time, our leaders failed us.

Where instead of focusing, one,

pointedly on defeating Al-Qaeda,

they've instead use that attack on 9/11

to begin to wage a whole series of

counterproductive regime change wars,

over throwing authoritarian dictators in other countries,

wars that have proven to be very costly

to our service members.

Like Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi ...

Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, and the ongoing regime

change war that's still happening in Syria today.

So in Afghanistan you would've gotten out when?

Go in, defeat Al-Qaeda get out.

That's what should have happened.

Instead, what we're seeing now is a very long,

protracted, ambiguous mission where no really

knows what quote unquote winning looks like.

The ensuing nation building that's followed

in these different wars

that's taken so much of our resources,

our taxpayer dollars out of where they should have been

dedicated in nation building and serving the

needs of our people right here at home.

If we just pulled out,

there would be more slaughter probably.

If we stay focused on our mission

and what our mission and objective should be,

which is the safety and security of the American people,

then we end up saving a whole lot of lives.

We end up saving a whole lot of tax payer dollars.

The conflict and the complexities and the challenges,

for example, in Afghanistan that

we're seeing continuing over the years

and through today are things that only

the Afghan people can resolve.

What we've got to stay focused on is how we

ensure the safety and security of the American people.

There seldom is a discussion

that I've heard about what is our mission.

Exactly.

That's exactly the problem is before sending

our men and women into harm's way

we're not hearing about,

what is the problem that we're trying to solve

and what is the clear, achievable goal that we need to

accomplish that we're sending them to do?

Without that, we end up with a result that we

have where we have troops who are deployed in

these other countries without a real understanding

of what they're there to accomplish and at what point

they then accomplish that and then can come home.

Let me get your response to this op-ed in the

New York Times from some years back about Syria.

Five reasons to intervene in Syria now,

it would diminish Iran's influence in the Arab world.

Let's look at what's happened in Syria because

of the regime change war that we've waged there.

Because of the regime change war that

we waged in Iraq.

Iran has far more influence in both of those

countries than they did prior to our going in.

This is exactly one of the problems where we see how

our regime change wars,

and intervention has been counterproductive

to our own interests.

The argument was,

"This could keep the conflict from spreading

to Lebanon and Iraq."

Yeah.

Once again, we look at the cost and the consequence

that both the Syrian people have paid as a

price and the impact that it's

had on the region as a whole.

We can see how these decisions in Iraq,

Libya, and Syria have been counter to our national

security interests and something that these

articles often fail to recognize or announce,

which is that Al-Qaeda has been strengthened.

Terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and offshoots

like ISIS have been strengthened as a result

of these policies and these wars to the point where now,

we just observed the 18th anniversary

of the attack on 9/11 and Al-Qaeda is stronger today

than they were in 2001 when they launched that attack.

Stronger because when you kill their cousins

and brothers, more people hate us?

Stronger because our leaders failed us

by not staying focused one pointedly on defeating

Al-Qaeda and instead,

went and spent American lives and resources

in waging these regime change wars

and seeing how terrorist groups like ISIS

were born because of those wars.

In Syria, right now, Al-Qaeda and other

terrorist organizations that are offshoots

and affiliates are in control of this entire

city of Idlib in the northern part of Syria.

And other countries are,

Syria and Russia in particular,

talking about attacking Al-Qaeda,

getting rid of Al-Qaeda in that city.

And it is President Trump and his administration

that are the ones saying don't go after Al-Qaeda in that

city, and if you do will retaliate against you for doing so.

This is a total betrayal.

It's a betrayal of every single one of us

as service members, every single family member

of those who were lost on 9/11,

to the first responders who ran into that rubble

and that fire to save lives that day rather

than running away.

It's a betrayal to us as the American people.

But there is a human rights crisis there and

our hearts go out to them and we want to help.

We want to help.

What we have been doing has been

making the problem worse.

This is what is so often the case when these

with these regime change wars are waged in

the guise of humanitarianism saying exactly that.

That there are people suffering under a brutal dictator,

authoritarian regime.

We have to go in and help them

by removing that dictator.

But if you look at these examples throughout

our country's history, our going in toppling

that brutal dictator has not made their lives any better.

They have resulted in more death, more destruction,

more pain and suffering, more refugees.

This is why we've got to stop being the world's

police and recognize that if we want to be

a force for good in the world, let's

actually make sure that what we are doing

effects in a good outcome.

You met with the dictator, with Assad.

Yes.

And the liberal media give you grief for that.

I would think that they would say,

"We should talk to everybody."

Better talk than wage war.

I agree.

You would think that's what they would say.

Chris Cuomo, "You need to acknowledge that

Assad is a murderous despot."

Are you surprised?

And then what?

I think this is the problem is, you know,

we look back to examples like Roosevelt meeting

with Stalin, another murderous leader.

You look at JFK meeting with Khrushchev,

Nixon meeting with Mao.

They're examples throughout our country's

history of leader ... Reagan meeting with Gorbachev.

Leaders who recognize that,

in the interest of peace and security,

you have to be willing to meet with leaders of other

countries whether they be adversaries,

friends, dictators, or otherwise.

Recognizing what you just said,

that the only alternative to that is war.

So what's going on with your party?

Democrats used to be the anti war party.

Unfortunately this is something

that crosses both parties.

I call out leaders in my own party

and leaders in the Republican party as well,

who are heavily influenced by the

military industrial complex that profits heavily off of us

continuing to wage these counterproductive wars.

They're heavily influenced by a foreign policy

establishment in Washington,

whose whole power base is built around

continuing this status quo.

So much so to the point where,

when I'm calling for an end to these wasteful wars,

they're saying,

"Gosh, Tulsi, why are you such an isolationist?"

As though the only way that we can relate

with other countries in the world is by bombing them

or putting crippling economic sanctions in place.

Which is a really sad conclusion

when you actually ... that sad state of mind,

rather than seeing, hey, we're

the United States of America,

we have the opportunity to be a force for good.

To reach out to other countries,

to work with them, to show respect,

to find those areas of common interest

where we can work together for the wellbeing of

our people and the planet and be able to work out

those differences that we have

rather than resorting to war.

Seeing that war is only a last resort

to keep our people safe.

If you were president a few years back,

what would the alternative have been with Syria?

How would we have worked with them?

Well, first of all, making sure that we don't

launch a regime change war.

That war began ... A lot of people don't realize

in 2011, all the way back in 2011 and it began

with a covert mission working

through the CIA,

to both arm and equip and provide support

to a terrorist groups in that country like

Al-Qaeda, to overthrow the Syrian government.

This is something that has now been published

out in the open that this is what happened

and it continued to further escalate both