The Defense Department has renamed a military base in Charleston for Senator Lindsey Graham, the Republican from South Carolina who died on July 11.
That base, previously known as Joint Base Charleston, was created in 2010 after the merger of a Navy base and an Air Force base that were both established in 1941. It will now be known as Joint Base Lindsey Graham.
The senator had wanted to be a military pilot. But because of a hearing problem in one ear, he trained as a lawyer and served as a judge advocate general in the Air Force, the Air National Guard and the Air Force Reserve before retiring as a colonel in June 2015, according to his sister, Senator Darline Graham, who was appointed to serve the remainder of Mr. Graham’s term.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who spoke during the ceremony, talked briefly about Mr. Graham’s service in uniform.
“Senator Lindsey Graham dedicated his life to serving this state and serving the armed forces of the United States,” Mr. Hegseth said. “He served this nation, both in uniform and in both houses of Congress, as everyone here knows.”
Then Mr. Hegseth launched into a familiar tirade about culture war issues.
“Lindsey spent his final years taking on a radical leftist ideology that had run rampant in the media, in academia and even among a few members of Congress,” Mr. Hegseth said.
“The hard left declared war on our own military,” he added without explanation before attacking the concept of communism, which he said “promises heaven but delivers hell.”
Mr. Hegseth also claimed that “radical woke ideology” had harmed recruiting in previous years. He praised President Trump and argued for why his department should have a budget of $1.5 trillion, which he said Mr. Graham had supported.
Toward the end of his remarks, Mr. Hegseth mentioned the U.S. war against Iran, saying that the Trump administration’s goal was to ensure that the country “never has a nuclear weapon.”
“Every president for a quarter century declared that they would not let Iran get a nuclear weapon, but they never did anything about it until President Donald J. Trump,” he said. “And Lindsey Graham was right there for him in the Senate.”
Since the war began more than five months ago, at least 18 American service members have been killed and more than 600 wounded. An estimated 1,700 or more Iranian civilians have been killed in airstrikes.
Mr. Hegseth has renamed other bases, but for different reasons. During his early days in office, he reverted the names of two Army bases that had previously honored Confederate soldiers. The names of the bases, Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Fort Benning in Georgia, had been changed to Fort Liberty and Fort Moore after a Biden administration review of military assets that honored Confederates.
Joint Base Lindsey Graham is home to a number of C-17 cargo aircraft squadrons and naval assets.
In her remarks, Ms. Graham said that it was sometimes hard to tell if her brother “was a senator who happened to serve in the Air Force or an Air Force lawyer who happened to serve the Senate. Such was his love for both.”
“That’s the man this base is named after,” she added.
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