McCain and Graham: Two wacko birds caught out on a limb
McCain and Graham: Two wacko birds caught out on a limb
Paul Mulshine/The Star Ledger By Paul Mulshine/The Star Ledger
on March 21, 2013 at 7:47 AM, updated March 21, 2013 at 11:34 AM
The 10-year anniversary of the Iraq War has brought us a lot of postmortems. But no one summed it up better than Sen. Lindsey Graham during an appearance last week at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.
"I’ve never seen our friends more afraid or our enemies more emboldened," the South Carolina senator said.
He certainly got that right. Ten years of American intervention has made a complete mess of the Mideast. That’s obvious to any thinking person. Unfortunately, Graham does not fit into that category. He meant that as an argument for even more intervention.
As of Tuesday, he’d found his target: Syria. After what was reported as a chemical weapons attack in the civil war there, Graham was eager to invade.
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When it comes to wackos, this outburst shows Graham and McCain to be birds of a feather. For one thing, at the moment they made that statement it was unclear whether that chemical weapons attack was initiated by the government or by the very guerrillas they’re seeking to aid — or even whether it occurred at all.
Never mind. Any reason to invade is a good reason.
"Under what circumstances would Lindsey Graham oppose sending U.S. troops into a conflict?" asked Christopher Preble when I called him yesterday. "I can’t think of any."
Preble is a former naval officer who is a defense expert with the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington. He appeared on a panel at CPAC on military spending with three neoconservatives who were all critical of recent cuts in the defense budget.
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