OPINION:
Just when you thought it was impossible for anyone to screw things up worse in Ukraine than President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris already have, Sen. Lindsey Graham opens his mouth. On Twitter.
Shooting from the hip the way only a military lawyer can, Mr. Graham publicly asked for someone to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin — a certifiable madman who claims he invaded Ukraine out of fear that the West is out to get him.
Gee, I wonder where Mr. Putin got that crazy idea?
“Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian Military?” Mr. Graham asked, referring to the man who assassinated Julius Caesar and the officer who tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
“The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out,” Mr. Graham thumbed on Twitter. “You would be doing your country — and the world — a great service.”
No wonder the Air Force did not trust this guy with a weapon. They made him a military lawyer instead.
And I mean no offense to lawyers.
Who would have guessed that Sen. John McCain was the wise, tempered one in that relationship?
Anyway, it is pretty hard to stomach lectures from guys like Mr. Graham about the evils of invading other countries.
On 9/11, America was attacked by lunatic jihadists from the Middle East. So the geniuses in Washington like Mr. Graham thought up the bright idea to invade Iraq. Not a single one of the hijackers was from Iraq. The majority of them were from our great ally Saudi Arabia, which we chose not to invade.
Just as our addiction to foreign oil doomed us then, it dooms us today.
Luckily, along came former President Donald Trump who asked if — at the very least — we got some oil out of the whole invasion of Iraq. And then he set about making America energy-independent.
That was the beginning of the shattering of the alliance.
Today, there is a much wiser breed of “conservative” or “Republican” who lived through the debates about Iraq and those elusive “weapons of mass destruction” former Secretary of State Colin Powell promised us about.
Seared into our minds forever are the body bags that came home day after day after day while still no WMDs were found. In many ways, the crippled bodies and broken spirits that came home were even worse. That misery marched on in our midst?
They still ask, “For what?”
For many Democrats in Congress, their support for the war and the men they sent to die or get maimed lasted only until the next election. Chief among those turncoats were Mr. Biden and his global warming czar John Kerry, who actually ran for president in 2004 on a campaign against the war he had just voted to start.
And then everyone in Washington pretended to be surprised by the horrifying images out of Abu Ghraib. It was not just abroad that America lost enormous credibility with the war in Iraq.
Afghanistan — remember the “good” war? — ended in equally useless catastrophe with Mr. Biden’s bumbling disaster of a withdrawal.
So now today, the chicken hawks are crowing again.
Invade Ukraine from the east! Assassinate Vladimir Putin! Shoot down Russian warplanes!
LET’S GO WORLD WAR III!
And now the chicken hawks and turncoats are confused. They cannot understand why everybody isn’t on board with their latest great war idea.
“Putin stooges,” they call us.
Yes, these people accuse you of being a propagandist for Mr. Putin if you dare ask what is in the best interest of American national security. Or if you dare to remember the men who died in their last failed war.
It is true that there are no good or easy options right now when it comes to Ukraine. But at the very least we can identify who got us into this mess and remember each one of them next Election Day.
• Charles Hurt is the opinion editor at The Washington Times.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.