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Lindsey Graham and Our Vile Pro-War Culture

In a city full of bloodthirsty militarists, Graham distinguished himself as one of the worst.

Daniel Larison

Sen. Lindsey Graham, the arch-warmonger from South Carolina, has died. He leaves behind a legacy of death, destruction, and massive human suffering. Graham cheered on every foreign war and every sanctions regime for at least the last thirty years, and he was among the loudest advocates for the criminal attack on Iran. He finally got that one last evil war that he wanted before the end. In a city full of bloodthirsty militarists, Graham distinguished himself as one of the worst. 

When he was talking about the possible costs of a war with North Korea in 2017, Graham memorably dismissed the potential loss of life because it would be happening “over there.” The lives of others were always expendable for him, and he actively sought to put people in harm’s way every chance he could. His callous indifference to the human costs of war caused him no political problems in Washington. On the contrary, his enthusiasm for bloodshed was what made him a fixture in the capital.

Despite a long career of supporting U.S. entanglements in unnecessary and illegal conflicts, Graham’s position in Congress was never in jeopardy. He did an abysmal job of representing the people of South Carolina for the last two decades, but once he was in office no one was ever able to dislodge him. In Washington, he enjoyed a wholly undeserved reputation as a serious figure on foreign policy. Graham was able to thrive in Washington because of a vile pro-war culture in which his rabid hawkishness was embraced. 

Graham was initially a vocal critic of Trump because he feared that Trump’s rise threatened the sort of reflexive interventionism that Graham prized. Once Trump was elected, Graham quickly learned that Trump was much closer to his positions than he assumed. By the end of the first term, Graham had attached himself to Trump in much the same way that he had tied himself to McCain. He may have switched to a new leader to follow, but his atrocious foreign policy views never changed.

The senator’s record speaks for itself. He was reflexively in favor of military action whenever it was possible, and he never paid a political price for his knee-jerk warmongering. As a House member, Graham was a reliable supporter of the Iraq war and voted for the 2002 AUMF. Once he moved over to the Senate, his warmongering only intensified as he became John McCain’s trusty sidekick. From Libya to Syria to Yemen to Ukraine to Venezuela, he never saw a war he didn’t think the U.S. shouldn’t start, join, or support.

Wherever there was a potential flashpoint or foreign crisis, Graham and McCain could be counted on to call for “action,” and that typically meant military action. Together with Joe Lieberman, they were for a time the “Three Amigos” of exporting death around the world. This didn’t make them the hated pariahs they should have been. Instead they were celebrated as champions of U.S. “leadership.” No doubt many of Graham’s obituaries will lavish him with similar praise now. 

They say that the evil that men do live after them. That is certainly true of Graham, who supported wars that killed hundreds of thousands, displaced millions, and destabilized entire regions for decades. He was just one hawkish senator among dozens, but he had an outsized impact on making U.S. foreign policy even more destructive and cruel than it would have been without him. If Graham is to be remembered, let him be remembered as the gleeful co-author of terrible crimes against other nations.