I have never seen a political convention exploit dead children like this year’s DNC. Sure, we’ve come to expect Joe Biden’s perennial tear-jerking allusions to Beau, but this cycle we’ve also had eight black mothers of kids gunned down by cops, all wearing black except the lady who didn’t get the memo and who wore a gorgeous blue dress, probably not intending it to be a sign of solidarity with the silent blue line. And we’ve got the Mad Muslim from Maryland, Khizr Khan, who has gone mega-viral by turning his hero son’s death into a self-righteous rant against Donald Trump. It is a PR tactic, I suspect, that is more related to Mr. Khan being a lawyer than to him being a Muslim, given that not many Muslims would pull such a stunt, but many lawyers would.
This ex-Marine is not buying this self-righteous, political bunk
Sorry to be such a hard-ass about this Kahn guy but I’ve taken my knocks in combat and I’ve seen my share of fallen Americans, and I don’t like what’s going on here. I have carried zipped body bags of America’s dead warriors and I’ve smelled their burned flesh. I’ve watched them pass into whatever world comes next. I spent years reading every name, rank, hometown, date of birth and date of death in the Directory of Names of the Vietnam Memorial, a few pages at a time — 763 pages, almost 58,000 entries, from Gearld L. Aadland of Sisseton, SD to David Lee Zywicke of Manitowoc, WI. I still sit and read entries now and then just to keep painful but edifying memories from evaporating completely and to keep reminding myself how fortunate I am not to have been included in that directory of the dead.
Consequently, to be quite frank, I find the exploitation of dead American servicemen for political purposes distasteful and disgusting. I also find the exploitation of dead enemy — “We came, we saw, he died — hee, hee, hee” — for political purposes distasteful. But there seems to be no lower limit to how far Democrats will go to exploit the dead. The DNC’s exploitation of the tragic death of the Khans’ son — which represents, and is meant to represent, every American who has died in combat — in an attempt to gain the higher moral ground for the sake of politics is in the same category as rogue Marines pissing on the bodies of dead Taliban, in my opinion. Why not let them all rest in whatever peace they have prematurely graduated to?
According to internet reports Mr. Khan’s son, Army Capt. Humayun Saqib Muazzam Khan, was killed in Baquabah, Iraq on Jun08|2004, which was a bit more than a year after Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell and dozens of other American war criminals jacked up the illegal, false-flag war that got Capt. Kahn and 4400 other Americans a trip home in flag-draped coffins, and butchered still-unknown thousands of Iraqis. If Mr. Khan feels a need to vent his rage publicly and to exploit the tragic loss of his son for a just cause, I don’t understand why he doesn’t direct his rage against those Americans who were most directly responsible for his son’s death. Donald Trump didn’t send Humayun Saqib Muazzam Khan to die in Iraq; George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton did. So why isn’t Mr. Khan going off on Bush, who ordered the Iraq War, or Clinton, who voted for it and enthusiastically supported it? It seems to me Mr. Khan’s rage at losing a son in an illegal war is entirely valid but is being directed at the wrong person.
This Harvard lawyer, Mr. Khan, needs to read that Constitution
Mr. Khan’s syllogism is this: 1) his son died protecting the Constitution, 2) Trump is a threat to that same Constitution, 3) therefore, Trump is a bad person and unqualified to be President. I don’t know that I can argue with #2, and I wouldn’t begin to argue with #3, but I’ll sure as hell disagree with the first part. Humayun Saqib Muazzam Khan may have thought he was in Iraq fighting for the Constitution and to protect Americans and their liberties, but if he did think that, he had been duped. He took the bait, just like the 58,000 Americans who died in Viet Nam when it was the Democrats who were using false pretenses to troll for patriotic young men to give up their lives. Americans need to disabuse themselves of the myth that their children are dying in these undeclared wars to protect the Constitution or the “American Way of Life.” Democrats on the street need to quit pushing that myth and become, once again, the party that will stand up against illegal American wars. Enough of this neo-lib bullshit.
Moreover, I am completely flummoxed by the way Mr. Khan has attacked Trump on the ground that Trump has “sacrificed nothing and no one.” What? … is Mr. Khan disappointed that Trump has not lost a child in some idiot war? It is Mr. Khan who is waving the Constitution around, but has he read it? Does it say that to be qualified for the office of Commander-in-Chief one has to have made a blood sacrifice in behalf of the country? What the hell is his point here? What sacrifice did Obama ever make? Or Bill Clinton? Or Ronald Reagan? What sacrifice did Abraham Lincoln make? Did the fact that all of these presidents “sacrificed nothing or no one” disqualify them? Where is Hillary’s blood sacrifice — fabricated stories about her and Chelsea dodging bullets in Bosnia?
I don’t doubt for a moment that Mr. and Mrs. Khan have sacrificed more than most of us could imagine or many of us could endure, and our hearts are torn by their loss, but it seems to me to be unseemly to wish such a loss on any other human, no matter how much you detest him or her, and that is what Mr. Khan appears to be doing. It seems to me to be even more unseemly to use one’s loss of a child as a poker chip in the filthy game of American presidential politics.
I agree with Mr. Khan to the extent that I believe that there should be a Constitutional requirement of personal sacrifice before one may become Commander-in-Chief. In my opinion, a presidential candidate should be required to have served at least 3 years of full-time active duty in the military. But that minimal “sacrifice” is not now specified in the Constitution and never has been, so I don’t know where Mr. Khan’s juxtaposition of the Constitution with personal sacrifice is coming from.
But that’s not the only point Mr. Khan needs to go back and check in his pocket-Constitution. CBS quotes him as saying:
For this candidate for presidency to not be aware of the respect of a Gold Star Mother standing there, and he had to take that shot at her, this is height of ignorance. This is why I showed him that Constitution. Had he read that, he would know what status a Gold Star Mother holds in this nation. This country holds such a person in the highest regard. And he has no knowledge, no awareness.
This is so bonkers crazy on so many levels one hardly knows where to begin. For instance, Trump’s noisome, loutish attack on Mrs. Khan came after Mr. Khan flapped the Constitution around at the DNC convention, so Mr. Khan could not have been showing Trump the Constitution to drive home the point that it somehow demands respect of Gold Star mothers. Which raises the larger point: Gold Star mothers are not some sort of protected class under the Constitution. They are not even mentioned in the Constitution. What is mentioned in the Constitution is freedom of speech, and I have not seen this Harvard-trained lawyer, Khizr Khan, so much as mumble a single syllable about that right, which is guaranteed to Trump every bit as much as it is guaranteed to the parents of fallen soldiers.
Mind you, I am not defending Trump, his “platform,” or his gormless attack on Mr. and Mrs. Khan. Trump is disgusting on so many levels I could not begin to inventory them. Perhaps Mr. Khan and I would raise a beer to that, if he drinks beer. But daft as Trump is, it is still beyond my comprehension that he could be so utterly politically clueless as to attack Mrs. Khan rather than raise valid points of rebuttal to Mr. Khan’s hyperventilating when there are so many valid points to raise.
Clinton is exploiting these Muslims and the loss of their son
But then the irony is also beyond my comprehension that Clinton would exploit a Muslim family’s loss in her head-long endeavor to occupy the Oral Office where she will surely order the deaths of thousands more Muslims. Even if a President Trump (Heaven forefend the thought) were to block the migration of all Muslims to America, it would be nothing compared to the Muslim blood Clinton has been complicit in spilling in the past and surely will continue to spill in the future if she is elected.
So I don’t understand Mr. Khan’s position. Why would a Muslim get up in front of millions of Americans and root for the candidate most likely to spill more Muslim blood? Is this a Sunni v. Shia thing? Is he a shill for the Israelis, who are primary benefactors of Clinton’s penchant and plans for destabilizing Muslim countries?
Whatever Mr. Khan’s motivations, one thing is for sure: Muslims are going to be screwed either way this election goes, just like every election since Ronald Reagan’s in 1980, and Khizr Khan’s inflammatory rhetoric won’t change that. His PR efforts may put a more human face on Muslims in America — and that is a good thing — but if those efforts help get Clinton elected, they will surely exacerbate the horrible suffering of Muslims, mostly Shia, in war zones created by the USG in Muslim countries throughout the world.