A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan effectively danced a jig on the grave of deceased South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, slashing the senator’s bloody career of killing American soldiers and rampant war mongering.
“His death has made America and the world a safer place,” wrote Cato Institute fellow Doug Bandow in the American Conservative. “Indeed, freed from Graham’s stream of malign and belligerent whispers, perhaps President [Donald] Trump will return to his campaign commitment to put America first and end Washington’s string of reckless and endless wars.”
Graham, he said, “constantly sacrificed American interests to win the favor of an unsavory mix of foreign agents, democratic hacks, clever manipulators, and brutal dictators. Unfortunately, he was an unusually effective warmonger. After the death of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in 2018, Graham succeeded him as the informal leader of Washington’s notorious bipartisan war party, ever ready to send Americans overseas to fight wars for special interests and other nations.”
Graham “was never happier than when plotting another crusade for Americans to fight,” said Bandow. “His bloodlust was on constant display. He was most ebullient when palling around with foreign leaders responsible for the deaths of thousands, or better yet, tens of thousands of foreigners, usually civilians.”
The senator, he said was happy “sacrificing so many young Americans to bring ‘democracy’ to Central Asia,” but he also wanted to turn even more of them into “permanent colonial overseers.” He backed the Saudi leader’s “horrid war in Yemen, murderous aggression launched to turn that nation into a de facto royal colony,” and he eventually “reclaimed his membership in the “MbS fan club” after the leader’s grotesque murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
A onetime Air Force JAG officer who “never came close to combat,” Bandow said Graham “smoothly shifted to permanent groveling — intentionally, knowingly, convincingly, shamelessly — once Trump took power.” The senator practically “cried tears of joy” when Trump attacked Iran, “rather than tears of sadness when Americans were killed in that unnecessary war,” which was as Bandow describes it, “his most malign role.”
“Such a legacy,” howls Bandow. “His last major foreign policy initiative was to push an illegal, immoral war of aggression. Some consequences: Americans killed, U.S. bases devastated, American wealth wasted, Gulf partners damaged, oil markets wrecked, and a shaken global economy. For all that trouble, Iran’s power over the energy trade has been enhanced and its need for nuclear weapons has been made plain. Heckuva job, Lindsey!”
Bandow said Graham’s “passing is a personal tragedy [but] his departure from the halls of power should be welcomed.”