Candidate vows to crush Isis
A touch of foreign policy fire and brimstone was added to the 2016 Republican presidential contest on Monday when Lindsey Graham, an ultra-hawkish senator from South Carolina joined the race vowing to crush the jihadists of Islamic State.
Graham, a rank outsider who is renowned for his trenchant opposition to the Obama administration’s stand-offish Middle East policy, promised he would take the fight to America’s terrorist enemies if he was elected president.
‘‘I want to be president to defeat the enemies that are trying to kill us. Not just paralyse them, or criticise them, or contain them, but defeat them,’’ he told a small crowd of flag-waving supporters in his hometown of Central, South Carolina. ‘‘I’ve come to conclude that we will never enjoy peaceful coexistence with radical Islam, because its followers intend to destroy our way of life.’’
Graham, a 59-year-old two-term senator who served more than 30 years in the US Air Force, would be the first bachelor in the White House since James Buchanan, the 15th US president who elected in 1857. Graham has denied rumours that he is gay.
As a self-professed ‘‘God and guns’’ Republican, Graham promises to inject some heat into the foreign policy debate now roiling the Republican party, as he clashes with the likes of Rand Paul, the Kentucky senator with isolationist leanings.
John McCain, the hawkish senator who won the Republican nomination in 2008 and shares those concerns about Obama’s ultra-pragmatic foreign policy, has jokingly referred to Graham as his ‘‘illegitimate son’’.
Graham is an unapologetic sup- porter of Ronald Reagan’s Cold War doctrine of ‘‘peace through strength’’ and has warned that failure to put boots on the ground in Syria and Iraq is creating a vac- uum from which another September 11-style attack against the US homeland will emerge.
‘‘It is sad for me to report it to you but Barack Obama has made us less safe,’’ Graham added, attacking the upcoming deal with Iran over its illegal nuclear programme for risking a nuclear arms race.
Polls show a growing proportion of Republicans now question the interventionist policies of George W Bush and the worth of intervening in intractable Middle East conflicts.
Graham, 59, is the ninth Republican to declare he is running for the White House in a field that is expected to grow to more than 20 candidates, forcing US television networks to limit the televised debates only to the top 10 candidates in the polls – the first of which is in Ohio on August 6.
Current national polls show the race being led by Jeb Bush, the younger brother of George W Bush; Scott Walker, the unionbusting Wisconsin governor and Marco Rubio, the charismatic Cuban-American senator from Florida.
Graham has yet to feature in any polls, grew up poor in the back of a liquor store just down the street in Central, where he made the announcement yesterday. ‘‘Some of you have known me since my family lived in the back of a bar in that building,’’ he said, ‘‘but I’m pretty sure no one here including me ever expected to hear me say: ‘I’m Lindsey Graham and I’m running for President of the United States’.’’
I want to be president to defeat the enemies that are trying to kill us. Not just paralyse them, or criticise them, or contain them, but defeat them. Lindsey Graham