Lindsey Graham: ‘Don’t Vote For Me’ If You’re Sick Of War — Candidate Pledges Two New U.S. Wars


Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham announced on June 1 that’s running for President of the United States, and a few days later, Graham is making his platform clear. Appearing on Fox News Thursday morning, Graham stated that if elected, he plans to plunge America into war on two new fronts — Iraq, from which the U.S. withdrew combat troops almost four years ago, and Syria.

Asked whether his promise of more war, after the country only recently ended involvement in both Iraq and Afghanistan where wars lasted about a decade, might not resonate with voters who feel “worn out” by war, Graham had a simple response.

“Don’t vote for me,” he said.

Graham made the statements, and the bold call for voters to reject him, on the Fox News morning program Fox and Friends Thursday.

“I’m trying to tell the American people, the Republican primary voter,” Graham told Fox and Friends host Steve Doocy. “The only way I know to defend this country is to send some of us back to Iraq and eventually to Syria to dig these guys out of the ground, destroy the caliphate, kill as any of them as you can, hold territory and help people over there help themselves.”

“It’s a tough message,” Doocy replied. “A lot of people are just worn out by war.”

“Well don’t vote for me,” Graham replied. “Don’t vote for me because I’m telling you what’s coming.”

Graham, currently in his third term as a U.S. Senator after first winning election in 2002, the year that the United States invaded Iraq and starting the Iraq War that lasted more than nine years, has long been known for his strong advocacy of United States military intervention and use of force throughout the world.

During his official declaration of his candidacy on Monday, Graham delivered a message that could only be characterized as the polar opposite of the “Hope and Change” that helped elect Barack Obama in 2008.

“The world is exploding in terror and violence,” Graham warned voters during the announcement, who in March said that if he were president, he would use the military against Congress if it refused to pass laws that he proposed.

In a second interview Thursday, this one on the MSNBC Morning Joe program, Graham said he believed that while the American public may be tired of wars, members of the military are ready to go back to war.

“I think our soldiers are not war-weary,” Graham said. “You may be tired of fighting them, they’re not tired of fighting you.”

Graham also came out strongly in support of the controversial National Security Agency program that secretly monitors and collects the telephone records of ordinary American citizens, a program he said had been “diluted” by recent changes to the law.

“We’re at war,” said Lindsey Graham. “We’re turning the war into a crime, and I am sick and tired of this.”

[Image: Scott Olson/Getty Images]

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