Carolina Hawk Down

An obitiuary to Senator Lindsey Graham, the last of the hawks of the US Senate and a political giant not only in Washington, but across the globe.

Air Force veteran. United States Senator. Foreign policy hawk. King of the Sunday morning talk shows. Fierce defender of President Donald Trump. One can assign many labels to the recently and shockingly deceased South Carolinian Lindsey Graham, but discreet was certainly not one of them. Following his initial election as a US Senator in 2002, Graham established himself as one of the most visible, and most opinionated, individuals in the chamber on the north side of the United States Capitol. Then suddenly, on Saturday evening, shortly after returning from one of his many journeys overseas, Lindsey Graham was found in his Washington home unresponsive and in cardiac arrest and was declared deceased at 10:23 PM.

Here is a look back at the life and legacy of South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham.

Born and raised in the Upstate of South Carolina, not far from this author’s alma mater of Furman University, Lindsey Graham joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps at the University of South Carolina in 1973 and devoted his early life to serving his country and the study of law, earning his Juris Doctor from the same institution in 1981. In the mid-1980s, Graham, with his distinct and unmistakable Southern drawl, served as a JAG attorney stationed in Frankfurt, in what was then West Germany, eventually being promoted to the role of chief United States Air Force prosecutor in Europe. In 1989, Graham left active duty to join the South Carolina Air National Guard, and even as his political career began to blossom, remained in the US Air Force Reserves until 2015.

Following a brief stint in the South Carolina House of Representatives, Lindsey Graham was elected to the US House of Representatives as part of the Republican Revolution of 1994. In the House, Graham’s sharp-tongued Southern drawl arrived in America’s living room as one of the most resolute advocates of the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998. Despite his lifelong bachelorhood and rumors of closeted homosexuality, Lindsey Graham voted for both the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 and then as a United States Senator the Federal Marriage Amendment in 2006. Despite his fiercely conservative posture on almost everything else, Graham’s first two senate terms saw multiple bipartisan efforts, fiercely opposed by the Republican Party base, to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

However, it was foreign policy that will forever define Senator Lindsey Graham’s legacy.

Graham’s closest friends and allies in the United States Senate were Arizona Republican John McCain and Connecticut Democrat Joe Lieberman, two men who regularly acted as thorns in the sides of their respective party leaderships. Together, the three men were known as the Three Amigos, distinguished by their absolute devotion to the creed that only American hard power can make the world a safer place against dangerous adversaries like Iran, Russia, and Islamist terrorism, and anything less would be a Munich-style appeasement. In practice, this belief ensured Lindsey Graham never met a military intervention he didn’t like. In Iraq, when the George W. Bush Administration made plans to deploy a surge of troops in 2007, it was the Three Amigos who whipped support in Congress even as public opposition to the war mounted. In Syria, Graham advocated a close alliance with Kurdish forces as our greatest ally against the barbarians of Islamic State.

Despite a brief stumble last year following the calamitous Oval Office meltdown between Presidents Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, Lindsey Graham was a long-time supporter of Ukraine and perhaps Capitol Hill’s sharpest critic of Vladimir Putin’s regime. In fact, Ukraine happened to be Graham’s final overseas destination, where he met with the newly emboldened Zelensky and warned Moscow, “I have never been more optimistic than I am today that we have the formula to end this war (and) help Ukraine be more lethal. Let those supporting Russia to know there’s going to be a price to be paid... and to try to find an off-ramp — not to humiliate Putin, but to end this war so… Ukraine will thrive.” Indeed, Graham may have been the critical link who helped bridge the chasm between the two presidents who famously came to blows not even 18 months ago.

Senator Graham’s consistently hawkish stance, a principle from which he never wavered throughout his entire career, certainly had its dark side. Despite deep skepticism not only with US allies but also within the Trump Administration, there is no denying that Lindsey Graham was one of the principal architects of Trump’s fateful, and according to most of Washington, catastrophic decision to launch a full-throttle military attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran. As not only one of Israel’s strongest supporters on Capitol Hill but also a close ally to the exiled Iranian opposition, Graham had long urged multiple presidents to finally solve America’s 47-year Iran crisis and destroy the religious nazis once and for all. After multiple meetings with Benjamin Netanyahu and outbreaks of violence across the Middle East, Graham’s intervention has stuck the United States in another forever war with an adversary who despises compromise.

Whatever one thought of Lindsey Graham, there is no denying that despite his short, 5’7” frame (this author once met the man back in 2022), he was a larger-than-life public figure not only in Washington, but worldwide. Regularly fraternizing with heads of state and other movers and shakers across the globe, Lindsey Graham was a Washington legend whose absence in the corridors of power and the Sunday morning political talk shows will be profound. As the last of the Three Amigos, perhaps Lindsey Graham’s sudden passing will be viewed years from now as the definitive end of America’s era of military interventionism.