Why Did We Ever Listen to Lindsey Graham? By Joe Conason

[justaprogressive]

"De mortuis nil nisi bonum," said my father whenever a political adversary passed away, repeating the ancient Roman admonition to speak only good of the dead. So, in assessing the career of Lindsey Graham, lately deceased senator from South Carolina, let's note in fairness that he spoke passionately and often in support of Ukraine's struggle against its Russian oppressor, a righteous cause he shared with liberals and progressives in the opposing party.

However much Graham did for Ukraine, what his career shows most clearly is how powerful conservatives routinely escape the memory of their ruinous decisions — and go on to promote further destruction with every breath. Most of them never express regret for the chaos and death they help to cause, and instead persistently attempt to justify the wreckage left behind.

Today, and no doubt for years to come, America will continue to live with the consequences of Graham's blundering and blithering — and our failure to ignore him after the first time around.

Very few American politicians would still seek to justify or excuse the momentously bad judgment that led us to invade Iraq more than two decades ago. Many of the senators who voted for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution in 2002, including Democrats and Republicans, have expressed at least a degree of remorse for that lethal error. More than once, Hillary Clinton has said it is her deepest regret.

But on that ill-fated vote's 20th anniversary, Graham waved off any pangs of guilt for the thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed. "Intelligence was faulty," he dismissively told a reporter, referring to the comic-book depictions of an arsenal of mass destruction hidden somewhere by the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. According to the late senator, we should be grateful that Iraq — now governed by Iranian-backed warlords and militias — is a "democracy," kind of. Freedom House still rates it as "unfree."

https://www.creators.com/read/joe-conason/07/26/why-did-we-ever-listen-to-lindsey-graham]