If Washington is good at anything, it is self-celebration. Those who dominate the city constantly remind the public, especially those who live in the great beyond, the “flyover country” between the coasts, of the eternal wisdom, dedication, genius, and goodness of those who have successfully climbed the capital’s well-greased pole of political rule.

Never is the shameless hypocrisy on greater display than during the funerals of those who did the most to sacrifice the interests of the Americans who lack genuine representation in Washington. Such was Tuesday’s commemoration of the passing of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

Graham was a storied member of the Washington elite, a political animal guaranteed public attention irrespective of the foolishness of his positions, hypocrisies of his claims, and failures of his policies. He was one of the many influential denizens of the nation’s capital, a class whose members typically spend their days mulcting the public, enriching political backers, wallowing in self-congratulation, and otherwise enjoying the pleasures of power. 

However, he was much more than that. Like many others involved in making foreign policy—members of the notorious “Blob,” Ben Rhodes’s famous label for the self-righteous, well-insulated establishment—he constantly sacrificed American interests to win the favor of an unsavory mix of foreign agents, democratic hacks, clever manipulators, and brutal dictators. Unfortunately, he was an unusually effective warmonger. After the death of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in 2018, Graham succeeded him as the informal leader of Washington’s notorious bipartisan war party, ever ready to send Americans overseas to fight wars for special interests and other nations.

Indeed, Graham was never happier than when plotting another crusade for Americans to fight. His bloodlust was on constant display. He was most ebullient when palling around with foreign leaders responsible for the deaths of thousands, or better yet, tens of thousands of foreigners, usually civilians. He almost cried tears of joy when President Donald Trump attacked Iran, rather than tears of sadness when Americans were killed in that unnecessary war. A onetime Air Force JAG officer who never came close to combat, he evidently craved service as a celebrated general or grand marshal, secure in America’s Imperial City while directing vast military campaigns and ordering devastating battlefield assaults.

His preferred home court was a press conference, any press conference, where he inflicted his aggressive nostrums upon the American people. He was as skillful at malicious manipulation as he was at self-promotion, acting as a “Trump whisperer,” filling the president with aggressive fantasies of achieving political greatness by bathing the world in death and destruction. 

Perhaps only Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio more dramatically mutated from harsh critics to sycophants in the Trumpian policy universe. From his beginnings as a brutal Trump scourge, Graham smoothly shifted to permanent groveling—intentionally, knowingly, convincingly, shamelessly—once Trump took power. As Jamelle Bouie of The New York Times put it:

Graham could see the obvious truth that Trump was a malign and corrosive force in American politics—a destructive figure whose demagoguery threatened our democracy. But that was when Graham thought Trump would lose. The calculation changed when Trump unexpectedly won.

However, Graham’s militarism preceded his slavish flattery. Of course, Graham favored the disastrous decision to invade Iraq. “I fully understand why President Bush had to resort to the use of force to disarm Saddam Hussein,” he explained. “It has been readily apparent for many months that Saddam would not voluntarily part with his weapons of mass destruction.” Graham continued to stand by the war, based on a series of lies, despite the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, whose lives evidently meant nothing to him.

He backed endless conflict in Afghanistan, another unnecessary American military debacle, in which the Afghan people suffered the most, strongly opposing the Biden withdrawal from Afghanistan. Indeed, the conditions Graham set for peace would have required a permanent U.S. occupation. He declared in 2019, “Any Afghan peace agreement must allow a continued U.S. presence to protect our homeland, honor the rights of Afghan women, and uphold the current Afghan constitution.” 

That is, after sacrificing so many young Americans to bring “democracy” to Central Asia, Graham wanted to turn even more of them into permanent colonial overseers. After President Joe Biden withdrew U.S. forces and the Afghan government collapsed, Graham urged Washington to revive the war, calling on the administration to recognize ousted officials “as the legitimate government representatives of Afghanistan” and “publicly support Congressional efforts to stand with our friends in the Panjshir Valley who will serve as a bulwark against regional terror.” For him, even two decades of purposeless killing was not enough.

He visited Libya, where he supped with dictator Moammar Gaddafi, discussing the possibility of providing aid to the longtime U.S. antagonist after he gave up his missile and nuclear programs. However, less than two years later, when civil war erupted, Graham seized his chance to fuel another endless war, enthusiastically pushing the U.S. to intervene and opposing any effort by Congress to exercise its constitutional responsibility to vote on the conflict. President Barack Obama “needs to step up his game with Libya but Congress should sort of shut up and not empower Gaddafi," said the ever-belligerent solon.

The result? The cost in lives and wealth to America of the endless conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan were obvious. Not so much in Libya. However, even there his militaristic passions ill-served America. The results were even worse for the Libyan people. Observed the National Review’s Andrew McCarthy:

Libya now stands as a treacherous precedent that a president may unilaterally take us to war, in consultation with the Arab League’s Islamist regimes, under circumstances in which not only are there no vital American interests to be served but our intervention actually disserves our interests by empowering America’s enemies.

Graham was an even more fervent advocate of aiding Israel, regardless of its conduct—even in its brutal occupation policy and forever war to establish regional hegemony, which have killed tens of thousands of civilians. For him, Palestinians evidently did not even count as human beings. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appreciated having a leading U.S. legislator, whom he called “a beloved friend,” as a predictably loyal shill.

Despite his pretense of supporting democracy and human rights abroad, Graham backed the Saudi leader MbS’s horrid war in Yemen, murderous aggression launched to turn that nation into a de facto royal colony. Graham resisted efforts to end U.S. arms sales to the kingdom. “We can’t ask our Middle East allies to fight harder and do more and not provide them with the weaponry to do it,” he said, calling Saudi Arabia, which helped underwrite Al Qaeda and was the home of 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers, “a valuable partner in the war on terror.”

MbS’s grotesque murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi turned Graham into a temporary critic, but he eventually reclaimed his membership in the MbS fan club. Yet earlier this year, Graham, ever the warrior wannabe, got angry when MbS refused to join Trump’s assault on Iran. The late lawmaker always put war first, anywhere and anytime. He joyously celebrated the resulting death and destruction. 

In contrast to most of his militarist cheerleading, Graham’s backing for Ukraine, the victim of Russian aggression, at least had a moral component. However, he was a member of the malignant chorus that pushed Moscow to war, demanding Kiev’s inclusion in NATO. That understandably played badly in Russia. Just imagine how Graham and his congressional colleagues would have responded, with hysterical calls to initiate Armageddon, to a comparable Soviet campaign to bring Mexico into the Warsaw Pact.

Moreover, Graham’s enthusiasm for an active proxy war, in which Washington continues to help kill thousands of Russian soldiers, risked a confrontation with a nuclear-armed great power. Indeed, Moscow apparently is providing intelligence to Iran to help it target American military assets in the Mideast, something that even Trump admits is likely payback for U.S. policy in Ukraine.

However, Graham’s most malign role, in a career filled with foolish and callous calls for war, may have been pushing Trump’s ostentatiously reckless aggression against Tehran. “Graham had spent weeks arguing that war with Iran was not only justified but necessary, shuttling between Israel and the White House to help Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government press its argument for war,” reported Vivian Salama of The Atlantic. “Arab officials had repeatedly warned Graham of the perilous consequences war could unleash. Graham remained unmoved.” Alas, he always seemed to enjoy the carnage that his preferred policies generated, unmoved by the human cost.

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Such a legacy. His last major foreign policy initiative was to push an illegal, immoral war of aggression. Some consequences: Americans killed, U.S. bases devastated, American wealth wasted, Gulf partners damaged, oil markets wrecked, and a shaken global economy. For all that trouble, Iran’s power over the energy trade has been enhanced and its need for nuclear weapons has been made plain. Heckuva job, Lindsey!

No doubt, Graham had some personal virtues, such as caring for his younger sister after their parents’ deaths. However, his role as a “public servant” was highly negative—an unending campaign to drag America into endless wars around the globe that served little more than his militaristic fantasies. Other members of the Blob, who share his determination to rule over nations and peoples everywhere, celebrated that role at his DC funeral yesterday.

However, while his passing is a personal tragedy, his departure from the halls of power should be welcomed. His death has made America and the world a safer place. Indeed, freed from Graham’s stream of malign and belligerent whispers, perhaps President Trump will return to his campaign commitment to put America first and end Washington’s string of reckless and endless wars.