By inviting in Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat hostile to \u201cregime change\u201d wars, President-elect Trump may be signaling a major break with Republican neocon orthodoxy and a big shake-up of the U.S. foreign policy establishment, writes Robert Parry.<\/p>\n
<\/span>By Robert Parry<\/p>\n Two weeks after Donald Trump\u2019s shocking upset of Hillary Clinton, the imperious and imperial neoconservatives and their liberal-interventionist understudies may finally be losing their tight grip on U.S. foreign policy.<\/p>\n The latest sign was Trump\u2019s invitation for a meeting with Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, on Monday. The mainstream media commentary has almost completely missed the potential significance of this start-of-the-work-week meeting by suggesting that Trump is attracted to Gabbard\u2019s tough words on \u201cradical Islamic terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n Far more important is that Gabbard, a 35-year-old Iraq War veteran, endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries because of his opposition to neocon\/liberal-hawk military adventures. She starred in one of the strongest political ads<\/u><\/a> of the campaign, a message to Hawaiians, called \u201cThe Cost of War.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBernie Sanders voted against the Iraq War,\u201d Gabbard says. \u201cHe understands the cost of war, that that cost is continued when our veterans come home. Bernie Sanders will defend our country and take the trillions of dollars that are spent on these interventionist, regime change, unnecessary wars and invest it here at home.\u201d<\/p>\n In the ad, Gabbard threw down the gauntlet to the neocons and their liberal-hawk sidekicks, by accusing them of wasting trillions of dollars \u201con these interventionist, regime change, unnecessary wars.\u201d Her comments mesh closely with Trump\u2019s own perspective.<\/p>\n