Lindsey Graham, the four-term South Carolina Republican who died over the weekend, is receiving bipartisan tributes. Democratic senators have praised his sense of humor and occasional willingness to work across party lines. But his actual record tells a different story about where his influence led American foreign policy and what that cost.
Graham built his career on pushing the United States toward military intervention. Long before his Senate days, as a House member in 2002, he was already advocating regime change in Iraq. "We're looking at going after Saddam Hussein, not to contain him, but to replace him," he said that March, a year before the invasion began.
The Iraq war proved catastrophic, built partly on false claims about chemical weapons. Graham never recanted. Instead, he spent years calling for more conflict. In 2010, he advocated attacking Iran to "neuter" its ability to wage war. By 2015, he was denouncing the Iran nuclear deal alongside John McCain and Joseph Lieberman.
His commitment to Israeli military dominance became his defining foreign policy focus. In 2017, he championed moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He pushed for unlimited military aid to Israel and, after Hamas attacks in 2023, became one of the conflict's most vocal backers in Congress.
When asked if Israel's Gaza campaign aligned with Christian values while "killing children, killing mothers, killing families who are not militants," Graham dismissed the concern outright. He argued Israel should "flatten Gaza." He wanted American pilots flying combat missions against Hezbollah in Lebanon. "I want our fingerprints on that," he told the Times of Israel in 2025.
Graham's worldview extended beyond the Middle East. He pushed for U.S. military operations in Colombia against drug trafficking, telling CBS News the administration would "blow them up and kill the people that want to poison America."
His philosophy crystallized in a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition in October 2025. "We're killing all the right people," he declared, "and we're cutting your taxes."
The results of two decades of this doctrine are visible across multiple regions. The U.N. found that Israel killed 20,000 children and injured 44,000 more in Gaza since October 2023, with evidence of deliberate targeting of Palestinian children. Israeli airstrikes continue killing civilians in Lebanon. Wars have resumed, with little prospect of resolution.
Graham's influence on U.S. foreign policy was outsized, according to the Wall Street Journal. He received over $400,000 from AIPAC alone in 2025-2026, his largest organizational donation. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly planned to attend his funeral.
The senator's legacy is not one of bipartisan charm or occasional humor deployed in service of reasonable policy. It is decades of failed military interventions pursued with unwavering conviction, each failure met not with recalibration but with calls for the next operation.
Author James Rodriguez: "Graham's death won't end the hawkish consensus he helped cement, but it's worth asking whether America got better outcomes from the endless wars he championed than from the restraint he consistently rejected."
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