Lindsey Graham's legacy: Relentless warmongering dressed in folksy charm

Lindsey Graham's legacy: Relentless warmongering dressed in folksy charm

Submitted by
Ammiel Alcalay
on
Thu, 07/16/2026 - 16:10

From the Iraq quagmire to Israel's genocide in Gaza, the late senator never encountered a military intervention he didn't like

Senator Lindsey Graham arrives to speak with US President Donald Trump during a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, on 2 March 2020 (Brendan Smialowski/AFP)

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While the ideological and propagandistic projection of American exceptionalism as a force for good in the world has taken some lethal blows lately, this fantasy remains alive and well when US politicians are eulogised, no matter how thin the homespun platitudes get.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who died this month, was generally portrayed as an avuncular figure who “got along with everybody”, as President Donald Trump put it, despite their once-acrimonious relationship. John Thune, the Senate majority leader, said Graham “believed in the might of America to achieve good in the world”. 

This “regular guy” image stands far removed from Graham’s actual role as an instrumental cog in the military-industrial machine, which churns out misery and death through US imperialist campaigns of destruction and extraction around the world.

Responses across the aisle echoed the same consensus, reflecting a duopoly that drives Department of War budgets, support for US military interventions, and regime-change operations around the globe - without ever connecting those policies to their effects on actual, and much less powerful, “regular” people worldwide.

Among Democratic senators, Mark Warner posted that he was “heartbroken”; Adam Schiff lauded Graham’s “sense of humor”; Amy Klobuchar remarked on “his love for the world … and the pure joy he brought to life”; and Elizabeth Warren noted: “Even though we disagreed on much, he was always willing to negotiate, with humor and wit.” 

Many left-leaning commentators were not quite as sanguine. Brandon Friedman, a veteran of the Iraq War, wrote in response to Schiff’s post: “What I’ll remember most about Senator Graham is how he sent my friends to die in an unnecessary war in Iraq.” 

Political consultant Jamison Foser scathingly noted: “Deeply saddened to learn of the loss of my dear friend Satan, the Prince of Lies. Though we often disagreed about matters such as the appropriate role of torture in the afterlife, I will most remember how his quick wit and affable nature made our weekly golf outings a ritual. He will be missed.”

'With Israel to our dying day'

Some conservative and MAGA-affiliated commentators had also turned on Graham in recent days, particularly after he gleefully declared of the US-Israeli war on Iran: “I’m with Israel. I will be with Israel to our dying day … I’m going back to South Carolina, I’m asking them to send their sons and daughters into the Mideast.” 

Podcaster Megyn Kelly shot back on X (formerly Twitter): “The problem with Graham isn’t (just) that he’s a homicidal maniac, it’s that Trump likes and is listening to him, and Trump’s favorite channel is parading him around like a Hefner bunny in stockings on every show.”

Naturally, both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky weighed in on Graham’s death, as the senator had been a staunch advocate of supporting Ukraine to the last Ukrainian, while encouraging Israel to use nuclear weapons against those resisting its genocidal terror. 

In the cesspool of US politics, where campaign funds and backing from various lobbies are the name of the game, Graham had the ability to raise big money

Netanyahu posted that “Sara and I grieve with the American people over the loss of our dear friend”, while Zelensky hailed Graham as “a true defender of freedom and the values that make our world safer”.

In the US mainstream media, the obvious questions are never asked: safer for whom? For Afghans, Iraqis, Libyans, Palestinians, Lebanese or Iranians - to mention only a few peoples and nations that have been on the receiving end of American military belligerence, so tirelessly advocated by Graham? And to whose lives exactly, to quote Klobuchar, did he bring such joy?

In his now-infamous rant on Meet the Press in May 2024, during a discussion around the supposed “red line” not to be crossed in Gaza’s Rafah, Graham went full “Dr Strangelove” on host Kristen Welker, barely letting her get a word in edgewise as he pressed on.

“So when we were faced with destruction as a nation after Pearl Harbour, fighting the Germans and the Japanese, we decided to end the war by bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons. That was the right decision,” Graham said. 

“Give Israel the bombs they need to end the war they can’t afford to lose, and work with them to minimise casualties … Why is it okay for America to drop two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end their existential threat war? Why was it okay for us to do that? I thought it was okay. To Israel, do whatever you have to do to survive as a Jewish state.”

Unholy alliance

An unapologetic warmonger throughout his Senate career, Graham never encountered a military intervention he didn’t want to support. Amid the drumbeat for regime change in Iran, Graham gloated: “We’re going to make a ton of money.” 

In the cesspool of US politics, where campaign funds and backing from various lobbies are the name of the game, Graham had the ability to raise big money. 

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While Aipac and other supporters of Israel often contributed the lion’s share, Graham also drew funding from donors affiliated with global defence manufacturing giants Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, along with others in the war industry. The end result of these lobbying campaigns - the destruction of countries, and the slaughter of millions of people - is rarely mentioned. 

As journalist Ahmed Asmar wrote in Middle East Monitor: “This devilish relationship between death merchants and their legislative allies has fueled the American-led wars in the past two decades, in Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, and most recently, the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran.” 

He continued: “Lindsey Graham stands as the typical politician of this unholy alliance - a politician whose words and votes consistently prioritize the profits of the war industry and the expansionist ambitions of a foreign state (Israel) over the wellbeing of the American people who fund it all with their tax dollars.”

While there is more than a little conspiratorial scuttlebutt about the circumstances of Graham’s demise, given that he had just returned to the US from visiting a drone factory in Ukraine, commentator Pepe Escobar summed it up in his inimitable way: “Whether a warmongering vermin … had a ‘sudden illness’ or received a missile business card is irrelevant. The problem is all the horrors he personified persist.” 

One of these horrors is the political system of which Graham was such an integral part. It, too, persists - despite signs of its demise.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

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