The Hill reported the latest insights from one of the nation’s leading warmongers:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) warned on Tuesday that Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi is “serious” about attacking European cities in order to pressure European officials to cease their airstrikes against Libya.

“He actually means it,” Graham said of Gadhafi. “Hitler meant it. He means it.”

Greg Scoblete makes the right point that Lindsey Graham might want to consider the possible negative consequences of attacking other countries before calling for military action. The Libyan government has become a security threat to the governments that attacked it, and this was entirely avoidable. The Libyan war created an enemy where one had ceased to exist.

We may hope that Gaddafi’s resources are so stretched and his regime so weakened that he cannot carry out such threats. Despite issuing similar threats against Mediterranean commerce and shipping before the intervention began, Gaddafi has not been able to make good on any of them. What can’t be stressed enough here is that the U.S. and Europe have created a security threat to Europe as a result of interfering in an internal Libyan conflict. It is rather perverse that an alliance designed for collective security has entered into an “out-of-area” conflict that had nothing to do with Europe at the risk of inviting attack on Europe.

The automatic Hitler reference reveals Graham’s limited historical knowledge, and it is so typical that it is almost funny. The comparison does provide an opportunity to reflect on how unwise the Libyan war is. Quite unlike Hitler, Gaddafi was willing to abandon his previous policies towards the rest of the world through negotiations and engagement. The government that was taken in by what have proved to be false promises of security was the Libyan government. No doubt there is a Libyan Lindsey Graham out there somewhere who would like to berate Gaddafi for his Munich-style capitulation to untrustworthy foreign governments.