An interview on CNN, Sen. Lindsey Graham on Oct. 31 delivered the most chilling public statement to Americans, by an American elected official, that America’s atomic-weapon slaughter of two Japanese cities in 1945, which Graham assumed to be fully justified, gave Israel, today, the right to slaughter any number of Palestinians to eliminate the Hamas organization.
As Antiwar.com reported Nov. 1, Senator Graham was simply claiming that there should be “no limit” to the civilian casualties, that Israel is right and justified to cause in this “war” on Hamas. Actually his horrible claim arose from questioning about the IDF’s bombing of the entire Jabalia refugee camp in north Gaza in order to kill “one Hamas commander.” “What if the United States was trying to kill one terrorist leader,” CNN’s Abby Phillip asked. “Would the United States be justified in killing a large number of civilians to get that one terrorist?”
Graham immediately responded, “That’s the wrong example,” and said the right example was the American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic weapons to get Japan to surrender. He continued, as quoted by Antiwar.com news editor Dave DeCamp: “If somebody asked us after World War II, ‘Is there a limit—what would you do to make sure that Japan and Germany don’t conquer the world? Is there any limit to what Israel should do to the people who are trying to slaughter the Jews?’ The answer is no. There is no limit.”
DeCamp’s article adds that Graham had already told Fox News in another interview: “Gaza is going to look like Tokyo and Berlin at the end of World War II when this is over. And if it doesn’t look that way, Israel made a mistake.”
Senator Graham is thus reverting, by analogy, to an ugly, imperial U.S. policy, dating back to 1945, of repeatedly threatening to use nuclear weapons first, preemptively, against nuclear and non-nuclear adversaries alike. And he is a noisy part of the war party faction which entertains pre-emptive bombing of non-nuclear Iran now.
