Just when the US presidential contest needed a real macho man candidate, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) today threw his camouflaged hat in the ring. The Senator is staking it all on the proposition that after 14 years of fighting a global war on terror that has produced nothing but more terror, what Americans really want is eight more years of turbocharged world war under Comandante Graham.
“Radical Islam is running wild,” said Graham today, but “I’m afraid some Americans have grown tired of fighting them.”
Graham is disgusted that the American people are going weak-kneed about war, and he won’t give an inch. Forget that the US war on Iraq was the reason that “radical Islam is running wild.” Graham is holding firm to the idea that attacking Iraq was a very good thing.
It was a defensive war, he claimed last month. After all, Saddam was firing on US planes as they bombed Iraq! He first made that claim before the war, in response to then-Rep. Ron Paul’s claim that Iraq had not attacked us. To Graham, it is aggression if you shoot back at an American plane that has flown thousands of miles to bomb you.
Saddam was “denying UN weapons inspectors access to sites where we thought there would be weapons of mass destruction,” he also told Wolf Blitzer in the same interview. But we have known for years that this is untrue, a lie often used at the time by President Bush to justify the war. The inspectors were in Iraq and working right up until President Bush told them to leave because he was going to start bombing.
The mess in Iraq is all Obama’s fault, says Graham. If we had never left, Iraq would be well on the road to being the democratic nirvana that the neocons promised before the attack.
What is to be done now? Graham wants to re-invade Iraq and to invade Syria:
We’re going to have to send some of our troops back over there, to partner with Iraqis and Arab armies to make sure these radical islamists don’t hit us here at home. There is no easy way forward. There no way to win the war without some of us being over there doing the fighting so they don’t hit us here at home.
How many troops?
“About 10,000. I think about 10,000.”
And in Syria, where the only effective force fighting al-Qaeda and ISIS is the Syrian Arab Army under President Assad?
Graham spelled out his Syria strategy in an editorial he penned with his partner Sen. John McCain last fall in the Wall Street Journal: “To Defeat Islamic State, Remove Assad.”
Thanks to Mother Jones magazine, we have a few other Graham-isms to chew on for the time being:
“Everything I learned about Iranians I learned working in the pool room…I met a lot of liars, and I know the Iranians are lying.” —May 22, 2015, speaking at a conference about his job in a pool hall as a young man.
“If I’m president of the United States and you’re thinking about joining Al Qaeda or ISIL, I’m not gonna call a judge. I’m gonna call a drone and we will kill you.” —May 16, 2015, speaking at Iowa’s Lincoln Dinner.
“Al Qaeda, Al Nusra, Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula…Everything that starts with ‘Al’ in the Middle East is bad news” —May 3, 2015, while delivering the keynote speech at an American-Israel Public Affairs Coalition event.
“The last place in the world you want nuclear weapons is the Mideast. Why? People over there are crazy.” —September 4, 2013, at an event in South Carolina.
“Chemical weapons in Syria today means nuclear weapons in the US tomorrow.” —September 3, 2013, at an event in South Carolina.
It’s tempting to think that a Graham presidency would be more Fielding Mellish than Buck Turgidson, but to paraphrase the Senator, the last people in the world you would want in the presidency are the neocons. Why? Those people are crazy!
