Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) invoked actions taken during World War II as a seeming justification for civilian deaths ongoing in Palestine.
Graham was addressing critics of Israel’s war effort against Hamas terrorists in an interview with CNN host Dana Bash earlier this month.
The senator noted Hamas’ use of civilians in the Gaza Strip as human shields and then subsequently turning the death toll number into a propaganda tool.
“The reason so many Palestinians are dying, I think, is because Hamas wants them to die,” Graham said.
He also took aim at Vice President Kamala Harris for her remarks critical of Israel for killing too many civilians.
“If you have ideas about lessening civilian casualties, let me know, I’ll tell Israel,” he quipped. “But the idea of Hamas still standing when this is over would be the ultimate strategic failure.”
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Lindsey Graham Justifies Israel’s War Tactics
Bash pressed Lindsey Graham on whether or not there is some truth to Harris’ and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s implication that too many Palestinian civilians have died.
“Tell us how to do it differently,” he demanded. “What is too many people dying in World War II after Pearl Harbor?”
“Did the American public worry about how many people were dying to destroy Tokyo and Berlin?” Graham added while acknowledging it isn’t exactly a direct comparison.
This isn’t the first time the Republican senator has compared Israel’s actions to those taken by America during World War II.
Within days of the Hamas terror attacks that killed hundreds upon hundreds of Israeli civilians, Graham cheered the idea that “Gaza is going to look like Tokyo and Berlin at the end of World War II when this is over.”
“If it doesn’t look that way, Israel made a mistake,” he would say after declaring in terms of Hamas: “Kill ’em all.”
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Bombings Not Without Controversy
While there is certainly a contingent of people who believe Israel has a right to respond to Hamas in any manner they see fit, there are also critics who feel civilian deaths are still not justified. At least not to the degree they are being carried out.
The ‘Yippee-ki-yay, MFer’ approach by Lindsey Graham against Palestine isn’t everybody’s cup of tea.
Additionally, the bombings he mentions and others during World War II are not free of controversy. The firebombing raid against Tokyo was the deadliest in history. resulting in as many as 100,000 Japanese people killed and another million injured.
Most of them were civilians.
Gen. Curtis LeMay, commander of the US bombers in the Pacific, would famously muse that if the Allies had lost World War II, he “would have been tried as a war criminal.”
The bombing of Dresden during World War II was also a controversial move by the Allies after they destroyed the German city, killing a minimum of 25,000–35,000 civilians.
“Given the high number of civilian casualties and the relatively few strategic targets, some even called the bombing of Dresden a war crime,” Encyclopedia Brittanica writes, “though both the British and the American militaries defended the bombing as necessary.”
The United States had to do what was necessary to win the war, otherwise, our world today would be vastly different if the Axis had emerged victorious. Israel may very well be in the same boat.
But Graham has a penchant for cheering on every war action he sees. Around the same time he was telling Israel to “kill ’em all”, the senator insisted the best way to proceed following the Hamas terrorist attack was to conduct bombing operations against oil refineries in Iran.
Senator Graham was heavily criticized by members of his own party back in March of 2022 when he almost immediately responded to the war in Ukraine by calling for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be assassinated.
Graham also voiced support for establishing a no-fly zone in Ukraine, a move critics warned would effectively mark the beginning of World War III.
He has expressed support for bombing drug cartels in Mexico and enthusiastically supported the Iraq War.
A report surfaced last year that he wanted police officers to use their guns during the Capitol Riot in January 2021, suggesting they should have shot protesters “in the head.”
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