After Lindsey Graham’s recent sudden death, tributes to the late South Carolina senator did not just come from his fellow Republicans. Democrats, too, were effusive in honoring his career and character. Joe Biden said that while he and Graham may have had their policy differences, they agreed “on the profound importance of public service” and Graham “loved the Senate as an institution, even with all its flaws and complexities.” Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar said Graham had a “zest for life” and a “love for the world,” that he was a loyal friend who would be dearly missed. Adam Schiff praised Graham’s “sense of humor and how he deployed it to move his policy positions forward.” He said that “though we did not often agree, Senator Graham was never disagreeable.” Mark Warner said he was “heartbroken.” Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris (he was "full of wit, energy, and charm"), Chuck Schumer: all gave variations on the same statement. They disagreed with Graham, but he was an essentially honorable man with whom they were happy to work.

Residents of the ruins of Gaza may have a somewhat different perception of Graham’s legacy. “Level the place," Graham told Israel in 2023. “Just flatten it,” he said with anger in his voice. “We flattened Berlin. We flattened Tokyo. Were we wrong to drop an atomic bomb to end the Japanese reign of terror?” (We were, in fact, wrong.) In response to the Oct. 7 attacks, Graham thought that no amount of destruction would be too much. He said that Israel should do “whatever you have to do,” directly invoking Hiroshima and Nagasaki. CNN asked Graham directly whether there was any limit to the civilian casualties he would be willing to tolerate. “No,” he replied flatly. “There is no limit.” Graham said that Israel should try to limit civilian deaths, but made clear that he wouldn’t object even if Israel exterminated every resident of Gaza, if that was what it deemed necessary to “annihilate” Hamas. Anyway, the people of Gaza, he said, were “the most radicalized on the planet.”

We know what happened next. Israel set aside prior limits on civilian targeting, and was willing to kill hundreds of innocent people to take out a single member of Hamas. It attacked schools, hospitals, mosques. It demolished entire neighborhoods, razing them with bulldozers so that the people of Gaza could never rebuild. It killed aid workers, journalists, medics, and wiped out entire families. I will be haunted until my last day on Earth by the images that came out of this war, like a Palestinian father holding the headless remains of his blown-apart toddler. Israeli soldiers delighted in these kinds of murder, sniping children in the head for fun. As all of this horror unfolded, Lindsey Graham was one of the most stalwart supporters of the genocide.

And of course, this was only one of the wars Graham supported. Michael Hanna of the International Crisis Group notes that Graham “cultivated over many, many years a reputation for hawkishness and pushing for military solutions to US foreign policy problems.” The Iraq war that killed 500,000 Iraqis had Graham’s full support. In 2017, he encouraged us to think about going to war with North Korea, reassuring Americans that while thousands would die, they would be Koreans, not Americans.

Graham did not think much of the laws of war or civil liberties. On indefinite detention in the “war on terror,” he said: “When they say, ‘I want my lawyer,’ you tell them: ‘Shut up. You don’t get a lawyer. You are an enemy combatant, and we are going to talk to you about why you joined Al Qaeda.’” He said “If I’m President of the United States and you’re thinkin’ about joining al-Qaeda or ISIL—anybody thinkin’ about that?—I’m not going to call a judge, I’m going to call a drone, and we will kill you.” In 2022, Graham did not hesitate to call for the assassination of Vladimir Putin; more recently, he delighted in the invasion of Venezuela and promised Cuba that it would be next.

Ukrainians might be grateful that Graham supported them in resisting Russia’s invasion, but Graham’s calculus was cold-hearted: He said “I like the structural path we’re on. As long as we help Ukraine with the weapons they need and economic support, they will fight [Russia] to the last person.” For Graham, it was simply a great bargain for the U.S. to pay Ukraine to kill Russians, even if a great many Ukrainians also died in the process. Graham even encouraged Ukraine to change its draft law so that it could send more young men to the front lines. Graham admitted that the war was “about money,” and boasted of how it could end up enriching the United States.

Graham agitated for years for a war with the “religious Nazis” of Iran. After October 7, he seized on the opportunity to urge bombing Iran, “even in the absence of direct evidence of their involvement” in Hamas’ attack. He called on the U.S. to threaten war crimes against Iranian infrastructure. He coached Benjamin Netanyahu on how to talk Trump into waging war against Iran. When Trump finally launched the illegal war of aggression that Graham had spent so long salivating over, Graham said that the $1 billion a day spent on it was the best money ever spent, even though the war was a humiliating catastrophe for the U.S., which achieved none of its goals. (The Iranian regime remained intact, and was in fact strengthened, and Iran was able to successfully stop shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, which the U.S. has been unable to keep open.) He asked his constituents to “send their sons and daughters to the Mideast” to fight against Iran.

Al Franken once claimed that Lindsey Graham was the funniest U.S. Senator. Admittedly, I appreciate one crack Graham once made about Ted Cruz, when he said that “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.” (Cruz pronounced himself devastated over Graham’s death.) Apparently Graham’s final joke was “I can’t die now, I still need to do the Russia sanctions, get Iran sorted out, and do Israeli-Saudi normalization." Then he died, which is admittedly amusing, but the remark amounts to saying: I can’t die, I still have more ways in which I can ruin the world. We are all fortunate that Graham was not able to continue trying to “sort out” Iran.