When Washington buried a war maker

Today, as the flags fly at half-staff over the United States Capitol, Benjamin Netanyahu sits in the pews of Washington’s National Cathedral, paying his respects to the late Senator Lindsey Graham. The irony is as suffocating as the incense: the man who spent decades lobbying for American blood to be spilled in Israel’s name has finally met his maker, and the very beneficiary of his zeal is present to honour him.

Let no one mistake this funeral for a moment of national mourning. This is a gathering of the war party, a reunion of those who have spent a generation remaking the Middle East in the image of Israeli power, and Lindsey Graham was its most devoted, most zealous, most unapologetic soldier.

The documentary footage that surfaced in the days before his death — Lindsey’s Game — has stripped away the final pretence. There he is, on the phone with Netanyahu in March of last year, cheerfully offering to lobby Donald Trump to join Israel’s bombing campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon. He was planning to fly to Florida to press the president to commit American military forces to yet another Middle Eastern war. 

In the same footage, he tells Netanyahu that the years-long push for war against Iran was “the best thing I’ve ever done.” He laughs. He jokes. He describes Trump as “a great wartime president” who “loves blowing stuff up.” He compares Trump and Netanyahu to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.

This is not a statesman. This is a ghoul. Graham had been advocating for military conflict with Iran since the Obama administration. He was among the first to push for withdrawal from the JCPOA, repeatedly calling for increased sanctions, economic pressure, and the targeting of Iran’s vital infrastructure. 

He suggested that regime change was “the best and only long-term answer.” And during Biden’s presidency, he made comments about killing Iranian nuclear scientists — a suggestion so reckless, so cavalier with human life, that it would have been dismissed as satire had it come from any other mouth. But this was Lindsey Graham, and he meant every word.

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Then there is Gaza. When asked about Israel’s military campaign, Graham did not equivocate. He did not urge restraint. He said Israel should do to Gaza “what we did to Tokyo and Berlin” — flatten it, destroy it, reduce it to rubble. “Just flatten it. 

We flattened Berlin. We flattened Tokyo,” he said, and when pressed on whether the use of atomic bombs was wrong, he answered: “Were we wrong to drop an atomic bomb to end the Japanese reign of terror? Were we?” He was not speaking in metaphors. He was advocating for the mass murder of Palestinians, dressed in the language of historical analogy.

When humanitarians rushed to Gaza’s aid, Graham advocated for them to be attacked too. He advocated for Israel to commit war crime after war crime. And when the International Criminal Court finally issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Gaza, Graham’s response was not to respect the rule of law. 

It was to threaten economic sanctions against any nation that dared to enforce them. “To any ally, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, if you try to help the ICC, we’re going to sanction you,” he told Fox News. He was not defending an ally. He was declaring that international justice did not apply to Israel — and that the United States would punish anyone who thought otherwise.

His Islamophobia was equally naked. He described Islam as “a very evil and wicked religion.” He spoke of the need to keep “radical Islam beaten down.” He warned that “radical Islam is going to hit back” on American soil. He framed the entire conflict as a religious war—a crusade against those who opposed the genocide in Gaza. He built a career on the premise that Muslims were inherently dangerous, that their faith was a threat to civilisation, and that the only appropriate response was military force.

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And let us not forget his broader record of destruction. Graham championed George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, asserting in February 2003 that Baghdad’s denial of weapons of mass destruction was “a flat-out lie.” Before he was even elected to the Senate, he was already pushing for war. “We’re looking at going after Saddam Hussein,” he said in March 2002, “not to contain him, but to replace him.” He opposed withdrawal from Afghanistan and spent years urging a permanent American occupation. He never met a war of aggression he did not passionately back.

This was a man who saw the Middle East not as a region of peoples, cultures and histories, but as a canvas for American firepower and Israeli expansion. He was, in the words of one analysis, “the model AIPAC senator: American in accent and mannerisms, but thoroughly compromised by Israel, and thus committed to Israel’s regional ambitions and willing to place American military power at their disposal.” He actively destroyed the Middle East so it could be remade in Israel’s image.

And now Netanyahu sits in that cathedral, mourning a man who was more loyal to Israel than to his own country. The cameras capture the solemn faces, the respectful nods, the carefully choreographed grief. But what they do not capture is the millions of dead, the displaced, the destroyed — the human cost of Lindsey Graham’s decades of advocacy for war.

This is not diplomacy. This is not statesmanship. This is a funeral for a war criminal’s most devoted enabler, and the chief beneficiary is in attendance to say goodbye. The legacy of this moment will be measured not by promises, but by consequences.

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