Lindsey Graham reminds us once again that he is a deranged warmonger:

Graham said that Trump won’t allow the regime of Kim Jong Un to have an ICBM with a nuclear weapon capability to “hit America.” “If there’s going to be a war to stop [Kim Jong Un], it will be over there. If thousands die, they’re going to die over there. They’re not going to die here. And He has told me that to my face,” Graham said.

This isn’t the first time that Graham has blithely talked about starting a war with North Korea, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. Graham has never seen a war–preventive or otherwise–that he couldn’t support, but it is a measure of how fanatical he is that he won’t even shy away from what would be a major, very costly war that could potentially involve the use of nuclear weapons. Perversely, he justifies an illegal attack on North Korea as though it is an act of self-defense, which it clearly is not, but the result of such an attack would be to make the U.S. and all of our regional allies less secure.

Our allies won’t be pleased to hear that American politicians are so cavalier with the lives of their citizens, but what is equally worrisome is that Graham is talking up the prospect of attacking North Korea after they have already demonstrated the ability to build missiles that can reach U.S. territory. He is threatening a nuclear-armed North Korean regime with attack, but somehow thinks that North Korea wouldn’t respond to that attack with everything it had. Interventionists usually prefer to target weak, outmatched states that can’t fight back very well, but attacking North Korea would lead to a much bloodier, far more destructive war than anything we have seen in the last sixteen years. That Graham seems eager to start such a war ought to discredit his foreign policy views from now on, but as we know there is no accountability in our foreign policy debates and hard-liners continue to be taken seriously despite supporting one debacle after another. We may hope Graham doesn’t get the war he clearly wants, but that depends on the good judgment of a president who has thus far shown none.