I quoted from the apology to the LGBT community that rabidly homophobic closet case Senator Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield) made soon after he was arrested for drunk driving with a young male prostitute in his car. Ashburn came to grips with what went wrong in his life much faster than any outed Republican hate-monger I had ever seen. From his public statement:
Something happened that I guess caused me to realize that. When I was in sixth grade, the police had a raid in the sand dunes [near San Luis Obispo] and a bunch of gay men were arrested, probably charged with indecent activity. That sticks in my mind — the publicity and the shame around it. One of my teachers was one of the people. The talk among the kids, the talk among the adults, the talk in the community, the press — at that time the choice was pretty clear: If you were gay and open, it was a life of shame, ridicule, innuendo about molesting and perversion. It was a dark life. Given that choice of whether you come out or whether you're in secret, I mean, there really wasn't a choice.And that's, basically, what the deluded voted of South Carolina sends to the U.S. Senate to represent them....The best I can do is to say that I was hiding. I was so in terror I could not allow any attention to come my way. So any measure that had to do with the subject of sexual orientation was an automatic "no" vote. I was paralyzed by this fear, and so I voted without even looking at the content. The purpose of government is to protect the rights of people under the law, regardless of our skin color, national origin, our height, our weight, our sexual orientation. This is a nation predicated on the belief that there is no discrimination on those characteristics, and so my vote denied people equal treatment, and I'm truly sorry for that.
Right now there's a battle over the future of Syria raging on many fronts. In Brussels, for example, Britain, Turkey and France want to arm the "moderates" (of which there are none to base a policy on, unless you define "moderate" as someone opposing Assad). The war-mongery British Foreign Secretary, an adjunct of the U.S. Military Industrial Complex, is arguing that arming "moderate" opposition forces would lead to less killing in Syria. Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden are being more logical and argued the opposite, saying that arms supplies would only escalate the conflict.
"How would the government prevent British-supplied weapons falling into the wrong hands, and how does supplying weapons help to secure a lasting peace?" asked Douglas Alexander, the shadow foreign secretary.So why is this relevant to a discussion of Lindsey Graham's sad life in the closet? As always, Graham is asserting himself on the side of endless war, hoping the phony-baloney macho demeanor will somehow throw people off the scent. Last month he was shrill in his demands that the U.S. get involved with another complex Middle Eastern War dating back to ethnic rivalries that began in the Bronze Age. On CBS; Face the Nation he predicted that without U.S. intervention in the Syrian civil war, the entire region will "fall into chaos" by the end of the year. Graham falsely claims that he fought in the Gulf War but, in fact, was an Army paper-pusher who never left the safety of South Carolina. He uses his bogus claims of military heroism and hardship to make himself seem "straight" (or the red neck conception of straight) and to bolster his flimsy credentials as a foreign policy expert. If skipping around Baghdad in the shadow of John McCain-- buying "darling little rugs" in a market-- makes Graham an expert, well that's the only thing that does. Lindsey Graham will never be elected president or vice president-- or anything outside of laughable South Carolina. He should stop pretending.
"Syria today is awash with arms and in the House of Commons this week, MPs on all sides expressed real concern about the identity, intent and tactics of some of the rebel forces. "In Washington, the prime minister clearly failed to convince President Obama of his case, so tomorrow in Brussels the UK's use of the veto would confirm that the prime minister had also failed to convince our European partners."
...Oxfam's head of arms control, Anna Macdonald, said: "Allowing the EU arms embargo to end could have devastating consequences. There are no easy answers when trying to stop the bloodshed in Syria, but sending more arms and ammunition clearly isn't one of them.
"Transferring more weapons to Syria can only exacerbate a hellish scenario for civilians. If the UK and France are to live up to their own commitments-- including those set out in the new arms trade treaty-- they simply must not send weapons to Syria."
Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham are pounding their fists for intervention in Syria after reports of chemical weapons being used. They have called for bombing Syrian air bases, arming the rebels and readying an international force to secure chemical weapons stocks. McCain was quick to say, though, he did not want American boots on the ground because that would be “the worst thing the United States could do right now.”Graham is a sick, bloodthirsty sociopath hoping against hope that he isn't exposed for his true nature. The Democrat running against him for the South Carolina Senate seat, Jay Stamper, never comments of the closet case thing. But he has been very vocal about Lindsey's warmongering.
Although McCain and Graham hide under the pretense of humanitarian intervention and securing national interests, they are paving the way for another war in the Middle East. Bombing Syrian air bases to create a no-fly zone would have little effect on saving civilian lives. The Syrian Air Force has 555 combat capable aircrafts, but they have not been used against civilians. Helicopter gunships have attacked civilians, but an NFZ would have to be far more extensive to protect against them. Unlike regular aircrafts, helicopters can quickly depart, attack, and land necessitating more surveillance and striking capabilities to remove them.
Moreover, as Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations explains, “the NFZ in Libya did not protect civilian populations; it was actually the use of close air support against Qaddafi regime forces on the ground.” Close air support (CAS) requires trusted intelligence agents and forward air controllers on the ground to protect civilians and attack regime assets. That is, Western boots would have to be on the ground to actually secure civilian populations.
Additionally, General James Mattis, head of U.S. Central Command, told Congress that Syria has advanced air defense weapons from Russia that would make it difficult to establish any NFZ. Also consider that Libya’s no-fly zone required a 7-month long bombing campaign. Syria’s army is much stronger than Libya’s was, and its cities are denser than Libya’s which increases the possibility of civilian collateral damage.
Next, arming the rebels will only prolong the conflict and further ignite religious fragmentation. The Syrian army is well-equipped and has much better training than the rebels. If rebels gain heavy weaponry, Assad’s forces could escalate their own attacks or further drive moderates to pick a side. Weapons can also be traded from group to group. Attempts may be made to transfer weapons to "secular" or "moderate" groups, but they could easily end up in the hands of Jubhat Al-Nasra, an affiliate of Al-Qaeda in Syria. Previous disastrous experiences in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia should be enough to swear off the idea of funneling arms to proxies.
Involving American forces in Syria will also antagonize Russia, who is providing arms and supplies to Assad. At a time when Iran is developing nuclear weapons and North Korea is more belligerent than ever, it would be diplomatically foolish to isolate a powerhouse like Russia.
[T]he main reason we should all care about retiring Lindsey Graham is the carelessness with which he advocates the use of American military force abroad. There is something disturbing about someone who has never seen combat being so consistently eager to deploy other people’s sons and daughters overseas. Maybe that’s why he has falsely and repeatedly claimed to be a Gulf War veteran.If you'd like to lend a hand in helping replace Lindsey Graham with Jay Stamper, you can do it on the Blue America Senate 2014 page.
I believe that Graham may be one of those people who appreciates our military’s capabilities and are frustrated when they aren’t being employed. It’s like having a brand new sports car in your garage all gassed up, the keys in the ignition, but not being able to take it for a spin.
Having voted to authorize the use of force in both Iraq and Afghanistan, was Graham not chastened when these two wars left over 100,000 civilians and U.S. soldiers dead or wounded and our economy on life support. Did he consider resigning, maybe to write a memoir in the hope that we could at least learn from his mistakes. At the very least, did he shy away from any future discussion of foreign policy. No-- not Lindsey. Instead, he’s weighing in on Syria. After reviewing all the facts, he’s come to a conclusion that we need boots on the ground and we need to bomb the country with cruise missiles.
There are so many ways this can backfire. Cornering Assad with U.S. force would make it more likely-- not less-– that he would resort to using chemical weapons out of desperation. The Arab proverb is “an enemy of my enemy is my friend” and intervening would make us friends with the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Nusra Front, Syria’s al-Qaida. We could end up spending money and American lives replacing a brutal dictatorship with a radical theocracy. Lindsey actually wants us to arm fractured rebel groups, many of whom have already committed war crimes. Their empowerment would risk the disintegration of any central government and could turn Syria into a sort of lawless failed state like Somalia, even more of a refuge for terrorists than it is currently. Not to know how wrongheaded it is to intervene is to ignore the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan and also to ignore the complexity of the Syrian situation, which virtually guarantees undesired and unintended consequences.
Lindsey, can you look into the eyes of these troops, or their parents, and honestly tell them that deploying on a mission to Syria has a high probability of making Americans safer, advancing the interests of the United States or contributing to regional stability in the Middle East? In fact, intervening in the crisis will not do any of these things.
Can you look into the eyes of the veterans of past wars who are disabled and homeless and tell them they just need to wait longer to get the help they need because we need those billions of dollars to fight yet another war? And how can we claim to support the troops when we send them to war and forget when they get home, voting to cut benefits for people who risked everything to serve our country?
Has Lindsey Graham thought about how $1.4 trillion in war spending could have been used to improve people’s lives? We could have increased funding for the National Institutes of Health by 600% every year for the last 10 years, speeding the development of treatments and cures for cancer, AIDS, cystic fibrosis, MS, and countless other diseases that destroy more lives every year than any Islamic terrorist could dream of. We could have provided low-income healthcare to 70 million people for 10 years, or hired an additional 2 million public elementary school teachers for 10 years. We could have provided 17 million military veterans VA medical care for 10 years, or provided 4-year university scholarships to 40 million students.
Don’t let Lindsey Graham (or anyone else) question your patriotism because you disagree with his foreign policy views. This is a senator who single-handedly blocked President Obama’s popular choice for Defense Secretary-- not out of principled opposition-- but to gain leverage over the President on a completely unrelated issue. As a result, the United States was without a Secretary of Defense at a time of escalating tensions overseas.
