That would be that Lindsay Graham, the Republican senator who is totally not pandering for re-election. The idea that this guy would have had any possibility of a role at the center of the national security and or foreign policy apparatus in a McCain administration should send jolts of terror through anyone who doesn’t think the war in Iraq has done so much good for the U.S. and the world.
Here he is talking to David Gregory, as covered by TPM. His topic? The failings of those who actually do the hard work of trying to make sure that the US foreign policy has something more in its arsenal than the blow-shit-up option:
Easy enough to say I suppose. Lots of places are in a bad way, and the news last week was flat out horrible. But, as always, there’s the tricky bit to come. That ferocious interrogator David Gregory asked Graham what Kerry should have said about events in the Ukraine. For some reason, this not exactly surprising query proved a bit more than Graham could coherently handle:
“One, he didn’t call Putin the thug that he is.
“And you’re ugly too! So there!”
I mean, seriously? The way to advance the goal of constraining Putin is to say nasty things about him? When, in fact, a US led effort to rally European nations to put real pressure on Putin is beginning to show force?
This is why someone whose strategic education seems to have come from games with toy soldiers should shut up and let the grown ups work.
But no:
He didn’t call for arming the Ukraine so they can defend themselves against rebel separatists supported by Russia,” Graham responded.
Because ramping up the deadliness of the conflict is exactly what you want to do at a moment when Putin’s own escalation has just dealt the Russian approach a terrible blow. Graham’s demand makes sense if the only if you imagine that if you’re not shooting someone, you’re losing.
Again — thank the FSM that this clown has only a soap box to deploy.
Finally, the cherry on top: Graham’s deepest complaint is that the present administration…well, let him say it:
“President Obama is trying to be deliberative. It comes off as indecisive. He’s trying to be thoughtful. It comes off as weakness,” he continued.
There you have it, folks. Why the current GOP can’t be allowed anywhere near the launch codes for the foreseeable future. Heaven forfend that someone with life-and-death power should stop and think a bit about when and how to exercise lethal force. Just go ahead and shoot, man! Something — anyone! That way you won’t look weak…
…Instead, you will just become weak. See, e.g., the way in which the shot-from-the-hip war-of-choice in Iraq has so strengthened the US position around the world.
Lindsay Graham is going to get his next six years in the Senate. The country will be the poorer for it. But it could have been worse — and yet may be, if we don’t ensure that the 2016 election consigns his worthless carcass to the green rooms and of the United States of Sunday Morning for another term.
Image: Netherlandish (possibly Jacob Cornelisz. van Oostsanen), Laughing Fool, c. 1500
japa21
Of course Graham is right. All foreign policy, specially when there may be violence and benefit to the MIC involved, should be decided by impulsive, off the cuff reactions.
Gut feeling is all that matters, facts be damned.
some guy
only slavish devotion to Bibi the Babykiller is allowed in the United States of Sunday Morning TV.
Amir Khalid
Obama is about to make a statement on Ukraine starting in the next couple of minutes.
KG
Fun fact, Ukraine doesn’t like being referred to as “the Ukraine”… That is how the Soviets and other imperial powers referred to it, subtly negating it’s right to autonomy.
BGinCHI
Talk loudly and carry a small stick in your pants.
Someguy
I wouldn’t sweat the Zionist Problem. The Iranian Nuclear Problem is going to take care of that one within a few years. It’s looking likely that it will solve the Palestine Problem at the same time, and possibly The Syrian Problem loo.
Lindsey Graham, on the other hand, will not be solved. You can only hope to contain him.
MattF
The more dead Ukrainians, the better. And the more dead Dutch, Syrians, Iranians, Iraqis, Afghans,… Sigh.
geg6
Between you and Charlie Pierce, Tom, Aunt Pittypat has been reduced to the quivering bowl of jello that he always is.
Shakezula
Suffern ACE
Yes. This isn’t difficult. As I understand it, most Europeans would be glad to give up their cars and heat in their homes this winter to destroy those Russians.
KG
@BGinCHI: no, they just want to swing a big stick, consequences be damned. It’s the dick waving school of politics (because it’s their approach to everything)
xian
Someone should tell Lindsay that Ukrainians really don’t like to have their country referred to as “the Ukraine.”
ah, slipped… see also “the Lebanon.”
KG
@Suffern ACE: Europeans will just get their gas from somewhere else… Like the Mid East, Brazil, North America. It will have no impact on anyone but Russia. I mean it’s not like removing the supply from a major market will cause any problems in interconnected international markets
ETA: this is something that I always bring up when people worry about china invading us or one of our allies. They make too much money doing business with us. Risking that for war would be incredibly irrational
Cervantes
Oddly enough, I caught a van Oostsanen retrospective — the first ever — in Amsterdam a few weeks ago. The painting you feature above usually lives right here in our neck of the woods, at Wellesley College.
Speaking of laughing fools, we should probably recall that court jesters, ludicrous as many of them tried to be, often also served the useful political function of criticizing their own patrons — when no one else was allowed to do so. Lindsay Graham does not serve this useful political function.
Anyway, thanks for the article. Graham is an embarrassment, albeit a dangerous one. Glad you’re keeping tabs on him.
Punchy
If there’s anyone who’s an expert on “leading from behind”, it’s Lindsay.
RaflW
@KG: I’m sure the France or the Canada can explain that patiently to our U.S. idiots.
cleek
it’s not quite ‘thug’, but Biden apparently told Putin that Putin had ‘no soul’.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/joe-biden-vladimir-putin-no-soul
dmsilev
@cleek: So then what did George Bush see when he looked into Putin’s eyes?
YellowJournalism
@xian: From now on we should refer to him as “the Lindsay Graham.”
beltane
@dmsilev:
His reflection.
BGinCHI
@KG: Check the batteries in your sarcasm detector.
RaflW
Has anyone told Miss Grahamcracker that WWIII will not be contained on the far hemisphere?
We were incredibly lucky via geography and economics in the first half of the last century that Pearl Harbor was about the extent of US land attack. The same won’t be true if the stick-wavers have all the hot wars they lust after now.
Suffern ACE
Yeah. But politically, Graham’s bluster wins. And I guess that is the point.
catclub
@xian: Well, we could start referring to The South Carolina Asylum.
Amir Khalid
@dmsilev:
Bush was hallucinating.
catclub
@KG:
Unfortunately, war often comes, in spite of this.
Mike in NC
The sad thing is this imbecile — a low-rent version of his hothead buddy McCain — had about eight Tea Party crackpots out to primary him for not being a True Conservative, because that’s just how they roll in South Carolina. Some day he’ll finally decide to retire and live happily ever after with a boyfriend in a mansion down in Hilton Head.
KG
@BGinCHI: sorry, on the west coast and having my first cup of
ambrosiacoffee now.Sherparick
I don’t know how far Senator Huckleberry has gone down believing his own con, but a great deal of this is simply part of the Faux News/Right Wing Radio 24/7 “Hate” of Obama (and Democrats in general). And it worked for Ol’ Huck as he cruised to an easy primary victory, despite being off the “Tea Party” reservation on immigration (voted for the Senate Bill) and Government Shutdown (voted to reopen the Government and raised the debt ceiling). http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2014/06/no-eric.html As Steve M. says at “No More Mister Nice Blog,” the prime requirement of a Republican politician is to to fuel 24/7 hate machine known as “Conservative Entertainment Complex,” and this is all what this word salad by Lindsay Graham was about, not about promoting U.S. National Interests and world peace, but of keeping on the right side of Wingnuttia for Lindsay’s personal benefit (as I am unsure that it actually helps the Republican Party wins elections to have this belligerent sounding foreign policy when most Americans I know, (including some who are otherwise wingnuts) are pretty sick of war.
Ruckus
Why is it seemingly a surprise that a 4 yr old acts like a 4 yr old? Squirrely Pants Graham acts, along with his bestest friend McNuts, just like a spoiled 4 yr old brat. Has absolutely no understanding of the world outside their heads, and no experienced memories of the bullshit inside, likes to stamp their feet, scream and demand an ice cream. 4 yrs old.
StringOnAStick
One of the best arguments against Graham’s ideas of “proper” military escalation is the poor refugee kids trying to cross our southern borders currently. What they are fleeing is the failed states of central America, made so by the years of being the location of our proxy wars, leaving them awash is heavy weaponry and filled with men well experienced in violence. Graham’s shoot-first attitude just makes more of these messes.
Scuffletuffle
@dmsilev: Sarah Palin’s house, probably.
Ruckus
@beltane:
Perfect.
TR
I love that Huckleberry Butchmeup has the nerve to call anyone else delusional.
Helen
@Amir Khalid:
Nah; he was drunk.
Villago Delenda Est
Hucklberry Closetcase doesn’t seem to get that from way back behind the blazers and plus fours in the depths of the closet it’s really easy to make dumbass statements about the leaders of other countries, instead of using…what is that word? Ah, yes, diplomacy, to try to at least not piss them off immediately when discussing their behavior. Kerry learned more about this in the Navy that Huckleberry did, apparently.
Also, too, David Gregory needs to be flayed alive, on general principles as an avatar of all that is profoundly wrong with the culture of the Village.
gratuitous
I saw that clip of Graham complaining that Obama was being “deliberative.” I looked at the DW and said, “So what, instead of analyzing the situation and formulating a reasonable response, Graham wants the U.S. to start squirting bombs around the world?”
There was a time when going to war was supposed to be a sober* undertaking**. Now it’s just fodder for some knucklehead to try to win the morning. Easy enough to do when neither the knucklehead nor the people covering him have anything to worry about like actually being called to gear up and go to war themselves.
*Yes, that’s a dig at President Drydrunk.
**Yes, that’s a dig at war and it’s only measurable by-product.
Villago Delenda Est
@beltane: Now, if the Dark Lord had gazed into Putin’s eyes and saw his reflection, I’d call bullshit, because the Dark Lord’s type can’t see their reflection.
The deserting coward, on the other hand would see a void. What kind of void? Well, an empty void.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@KG: there is a famous quote from an the English prime minster in 1913 to that effect about how international markets make war between the powers economically impossible.
Villago Delenda Est
@KG:
I give you Gramps Walnuts, the guy who made Mooselini his running made, and Huckleberry Closetcase.
Mike in NC
Wingnuts need to define what their version of the Free World consists of. Does it include Czechoslovakia? Belgian Congo? New Caledonia? For them history seems to have just ground to a halt 50 years ago.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mike in NC: Definitely includes the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia.
JustRuss
Am I the only one who sees that as a problem to be fixed? Assuming, of course, that it’s true, and not just an excuse to grift and blow things up. Christ, the Cold War’s been over for a quarter century.
Lurking Canadian
@RaflW: France would be an exceptionally bad choice for this duty. Since they do call themselves “The France”, and also call other places “The Canada”, “The China”, “The Brazil” and “The Germany”, they’d probably look at you kind of funny if you asked them not to call it “The Ukraine”.
…Or maybe that’s what you were going for, in which case I saw what you did there.
Epicurus
Why, oh why, does this little queen and his grandfather get so much face time on MTP?? Is it a secret plot to remove any lingering respect the long-running TV “news” show has? It’s working…Lindsay Effing Graham should go back to doing what the does best…shut up and let your masters at Faux Snooze tell you what to say, and keep looking “tough.” That always worked out so well in the schoolyard, why not practice diplomacy the same way?
Amir Khalid
@JustRuss:
Tsk, tsk, Senator. No one country can really call itself “the glue that holds the free world together”. No one country could hold the “free world” together if it didn’t want to stay together. As for the not-free world, just look at how Russia managed to hold it together at the end of the 1980s.
Dog On Porch
Are the words ‘hysterical’ and ‘hysteric’ considered out of bounds for use by democratic party officials?
They must be.
This entire generation of democratic ‘leaders’ deserves to be retired.
They have sat too long for any good they’ve been doing. They should depart, that we may be done with them. For the sake of the country, they should go.
azlib
@KG:
At the risk of going all Godwin, it did happen when Germany invaded the USSR in 1941. The Soviets were sending lots of good and raw materials the German way right up to the beginning of hostilities. State leadership is not always rational. We have amply demonstrated that ourselves.
Graham of course is just ridiculous. Why he is considered a foreign policy expert is beyond me.
srv
Still going strong in Florida:
Amir Khalid
The Guardian liveblog is reporting that separatists have agreed to hand over the MH17 black box:
LanceThruster
Lindsay Graham talking about ‘behinds’ makes my butt cheeks clench (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
AxelFoley
@Punchy:
Knew someone was gonna got there. LOL
Mandalay
I see some BJ posters still enjoy framing their criticism of Lindsay Graham’s comments in sexual terms.
The supposedly progressive BJ is every bit as backward and redneck as any wingnut web site sometimes.
Cervantes
@Mandalay:
Plus calling him names and simultaneously describing him as childish.
I think it just reflects how frustrated people are …
Hey, nobody’s perfect.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mandalay: Oh, fuck you with Huckleberry Closetcase’s tiny cock.
You’re too Leninist uptight to even understand the context of all those comments.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: The Moscow correspondent for The Telegraph, who has been on-site and doing yeoman’s work on this story Tweeted that “the train has left the station.” Follow him on Twitter if you want current news – he’s well-connected and seemingly omnipresent. @RolandOliphant.
A while back he wrote “you can’t film the smell, which is probably just as well.”
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: And by the way, your PM is being widely and roundly praised (and justifiably so, IMHO.)
Suffern ACE
I do like how the response is to arm Ukraine. Like they are some moderate Syrian rebel group. What would we arm them with? They seem to have arms. Do they need something so they could accidentally shoot down their own passenger planes?
Amir Khalid
@Gin & Tonic:
I’m not fond of the guy myself (lame claim to fame: he used to be my next-door neighbour) but I’ll have to give hm credit for this one.
Villago Delenda Est
@Suffern ACE: Of course, this overlooks the fact that Ukraine is already armed. Well, they’re not armed with USA MIC stuff, they’re armed with (wait for it) old Soviet Union MIC stuff.
Cash registers are not ringing in the US. This must be corrected at once!
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid: That’s no lamer a claim to fame that I once handed Norman Schwartzkopf a field telephone.
boatboy_srq
I hate to say it but this seems to have become part of the GOTea foreign policy perspective. “With us or against us” is fast turning into “with us or likely to be shot/bombed/whatever by us”. This drives the immigration debate and the impenetrable-Maginot-line-cum-Berlin-wall border security fantasy; the continuing oversupport of the F-35; the constant insistence that any real man would come out guns blazing instead of [gasp] talking to world leaders; the conviction in the face of all the evidence that Iraq was a success; etc. They’re not happy unless the US has forces deployed all over the globe constantly shooting at whatever target they find next.
@azlib: Graham can identify at least some of the foreign countries, regions and conflicts without sounding like (more of) a complete moran. Without him and McNasty, the GOTea foreign policy rapidly approaches the Palineque with congresscritters who think Hamas is good with Saltines. OF COURSE his first impulse is to go in guns blazing: that’s the default GOTea position. What makes it less useless is that at least he has some clue about who the target(s) should be. None of this constitutes a good reason for him to be a foreign policy expert; it just makes him sound less unhinged than his competition.
Cervantes
@Gin & Tonic: To call him a crook is to insult crooks. I find myself wondering what corrupt reward he offered Borodai.
Still, if the families are a bit relieved and the investigation can now get somewhere … these are good things.
Villago Delenda Est
@boatboy_srq:
This, my friends, is a classic backhanded compliment.
Patrick
But the opposite worked so well when Bush attacked Iraq in 2003…
Cervantes
@Villago Delenda Est: And you did not take the opportunity to electrocute him?
And by the way, what on earth does “too Leninist uptight” mean? Did your “auto-correcting” gizmo get the better of you?
Villago Delenda Est
@Cervantes: Stormn’ Norman was a one star, and I was a butterbar. It would have been, well, awkward to electrocute him with a field telephone.
As for “Leninist uptight”, it’s the sort of “political correctness” that our right wing specializes in, which they borrowed, without paying royalties, natch, from the Bolsheviks.
Gin & Tonic
@Cervantes: I don’t pretend to know anything about Malaysian politics. I do know that he’d be hard-pressed to be more crooked than Borodai, but if a deal was struck and the families get some peace, then so be it.
Cervantes
@Villago Delenda Est: Awkward, sure, but patriotic.
As for this:
Actually, it was the Stalinists more than the Bolsheviks — and they did not shrink from trying to use people’s actual or alleged sexual orientation against them, either. Not something I care to defend, thanks.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cervantes: It’s not so much that we strongly suspect Graham is gay, and that’s a problem (the fact that he may well be gay isn’t a problem at all)…it’s that he’s so busy denying it to his base. That’s what makes him mockable in this situation.
Amir Khalid
@Cervantes:
I’m not too sure myself what Najib had to offer a Russian hoodlum, who is already a “PM” himself, and who could in any case get hold of better, um, lady friends and recreational substances than could be sourced in KL. And I suspect Borodai was going to hand over the black boxes eventually, in the absence of other options. But at least Najib is doing better than last year, when 100 mooks with rifles invaded Sabah on his watch.
Cervantes
@Gin & Tonic: Has Borodai (allegedly) (1) made billions for friends and relatives while negotiating weapons acquisitions, and then (allegedly) (2) ordered his minions to blow up his foreign-born mistress with Semtex or whatever it was in case she, feeling under-appreciated, might expose the corruption, and then (allegedly) (3) allowed those minions to take all the heat and go to prison, and then (allegedly) (4) somehow get those minions released from prison?
And that’s just one damning series of events. There are numerous others.
Borodai’s a piker in comparison.
Amir Khalid
@Gin & Tonic:
And I’ll pay Najib another compliment: unlike Lindsay Graham, he does at least know how to work a backroom deal.
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid: You’re right — which is exactly why I find myself wondering about that (alleged) reward!
Suffern ACE
@Villago Delenda Est: well yes. But I think the most important take away is that we need to take middle defense more seriously .
Cervantes
@Villago Delenda Est: Like many weapons, yours not only unreasonably harms your target, it causes “collateral damage” as well. Given how difficult it still is to be gay in this society, I think I’ll stick to the use of other rhetorical devices.
Villago Delenda Est
@Suffern ACE: Oh, what a fucking joke that is.
Until we are able to come up with impenetrable energy shields that deflect and or destroy all kinetic weapons, the idiocy of “missile defense” will continue to fascinate those who don’t seem to grok that Star Trek and Star Wars are fiction/fantasy.
The idea of stopping a bullet with a bullet is, to put it mildly, ridiculous.
SDI is a massive boondoggle/joke, and anyone who knows anything about this, even marginally, knows it. This of course excludes fucktards like the deserting coward and the unlamentably late shiity grade Z movie star.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cervantes: I do not share that perspective with you.
Dragging closeted homophobes kicking and screaming out of their closets, so that all can see what hypocritical twits they are, is to me a good thing and in no way harms those who are out and comfortable in their own skin.
Suffern ACE
@Villago Delenda Est: but we need it on our east coast now. And more of it on our west coast. And maybe our north and south coasts, too. Because a missile was used to shoot down a passenger jet, we need to think about other types of missiles, too.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid: I strongly suspect that Uncle Vlad suggested to Borodai that he surrender the black boxes sooner, rather than later.
Circumstances are not developing to Uncle Vlad’s advantage atm. This fuckup is huge, and the whole world is watching.
Cervantes
@Villago Delenda Est:
You’ve named two groups of people here. Even if you don’t think it’s inhumane to hurt what you call “closeted homophobes” with what you deem to be their sexual orientation, there are other groups of people your response does not consider. I’ll leave it at that.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cervantes: If you’re a public figure, and you’re not being honest about that, my sympathy is very, very limited. It’s one thing to be a totally private person who is in the closet, and isn’t part of a political movement that hates gays with a passion, and to be a member of such a group.
Huckleberry Closetcase fits the bill.
Bobby Thomson
In the context of a foreign policy discussion other than, say, Uganda, attacking Graham as a closet case is irrelevant at best and pure ad hominem at worst.
sm*t cl*de
What I’m not seeing there is a promise that if Obama had called for arming Ukraine, then Graham and the rest of the Senate would have cooperated.
RaflW
I will say, as a gay person, that I’m totally fine with mocking Miss Lindsey. It’s the closety, long-term bachelor “I’m not gay, I’m a Republican” crap that incenses me.
Howard Beale IV
Now if only someone in the NSA is willing to somehow release all the dirt on Graham maybe their abuses will be taken seriously.
Howard Beale IV
@Mandalay: It’s very possible that Graham is such a sociopath he can’t form any close relationships with anybody; and with his political ties he may be every successful in paying protection where it matters.
Howard Beale IV
@Villago Delenda Est: The question now becomes when will the Russian oligarchs decide that Vlad is no loner useful to them-problem is, they’ve already bought up enough of the UK that short of the rest of world slapping restrictions on the oligarch’s funds/movements I’m not seeing them all to keen on putting the shiv to Putin.
Jado
But if they don’t shoot SOMEONE the guys on the playground will make fun of them for being wussies.
Republicans are all 8 years old