Who the Muslim Father’s DNC Speech Really Pandered To

Last Thursday night, speaking at the Democratic National Convention, Khizr Khan paid tribute to his son, U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan, who died in Iraq on June 8, 2004, after he tried to stop a suicide bomber.

As for every parent, husband, wife, brother, sister and friend who lost someone any war, I grieve with them. I am sorry for the Khan’s loss. I am a parent and can all too easily be sent to thinking about the loss of a child.

So go ahead and hate on me. But of the almost 7,000 American families who lost sons and daughters in the last 15 years of American war of terror, why did the Democrats choose a single Muslim family to highlight?

No one knows how many hundreds of thousands (millions?) of non-American Muslims were killed as collateral damage along the way in those wars. Who spoke for them at the Convention?

I found the Democrats’ message shallow. It was pandering of the most contemptible kind, but not as some say simple pandering for Muslim votes from those alienated by Trump’s rhetoric.

The Democratic pandering was to an America that wants to believe we have good Muslims (who express their goodness by sending their kids to fight our wars) and “they” have the bad Muslims (who express their badness by sending their kids to fight their wars.) The pandering was to the cozy narrative that makes the majority of Americans comfortable with perpetual war in the Middle East and Africa.

MORE: At one point Khan challenged Trump, “You have sacrificed nothing and no one.” True. But let us also remember the Clinton family sent no one to war. Their daughter did not serve any more than any Trump kid. Bill and Hillary served exactly as many days as Trump and Melania. Khan should have been more inclusive in his condemnation.

I would also like to ask Khan how he reconciles his son’s death with the fact that only a few years later Iraq is still deep in war.

Trump is an ass and I do not support him in any way. I am particularly troubled by his hate speech directed at Muslims, and Mexicans, and everyone else he hates.

It is not disrespectful to discuss these things. Khan choose to put himself and his son’s death on television to serve a partisan political purpose. We need to talk about what he talked about.

Peter Van Buren blew the whistle on State Department waste and mismanagement during Iraqi reconstruction in his first book, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. His latest book is Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99 Percent. Reprinted from the his blog with permission.

9 thoughts on “Who the Muslim Father’s DNC Speech Really Pandered To”

    1. Nailed it. Trump’s biggest weakness was exposed in March when he talked about the size of his hands, and other parts, on a national debate stage. He can’t help but lash out after almost any attack, even when there is clearly nothing to be gained by responding. There’s so much wrong with Trump, but the Queen of Chaos is just so dangerous, and stumbles like these might just be devastating to his chances at success.

      On a side note, if it was an intentional trap anticipating this reaction, you almost have to give props to the democrats for being sneaky and clever. Too bad they’re success may endangers all our lives. (Not that Trump would guarantee our safety, but perhaps he might increase the odds)

      1. It will not change anything at all. The staged circus of putting these parents on display for political purposes — is just reinforcing the cynics in all of us. And now everyone is jumping to trash Trump — and guess what? In the end, he will be the winner of this. The stage management around Hillary, the pandering to people of all races, without ever having done anything human for them — is her undoing. Trump does not hate anyone, he is just committing sin after sin against political correctness. And everyone who understands what it means, gets it. The era of putting people into neat boxes has come to an end. The era when only black people can talk about problems in black community, or Mexicans in their community, or only women can criticize a woman — are gone. Guess what? Hillary is not an inch closer to offering any solutions to our financial bleeding wound, the “wars” of choice that make the chosen elite, very, very rich. In fact, she will push spineless Obama into more of those during the months before election.
        So, how is it bad to tell that there is an Islamic cult, or “radical Islam” that Trump is talking about — or is it better to fluff up the problem, so we can by implication blame all Moslems. As we arm, finance and provide all the logistics to various fundamentalist cults in the Middle East, we are pious here about not even mentioning the word “Moslem”. Nobody would be happier then the Moslem community if finally somebody will point out that we have Salafi centers in US, Saudi schools preaching the Wahhabi Islam, and then, we are shocked and surprised when something like Boston happens. Somebody needs to talk about this, why not Trump. Or that we have over 100 schools in US that were privatized by Feds for failing standards, converted into Charter schools, and run by no other then Gulen Foundation, the “moderate” cleric we give refugee to, and who has with “his” money caused many a problem in Turkey. Moderate? He is a Salafi, but our wonderful lying press calls him “Sufi cleric”? Deliberate deception, in order to mix the two. Sufi branch is known for its peacefulness, for its poetry, twirling Dervishes. Salafis by head chopping. Gulen will not shake hands with women.
        By confusing, mixing unmixable, we are led by the nose. And the wars go on and on, and expand as we speak. So, have mercy on Moslems of US, and identify the cults — who is financing them, and why are our politicians so comfy cozy with them.
        Can we say something about Mexicans? Do you think that Mexicans do not know of gangs that endanger their community in the first place? Who does not know that the descent into hell of Mexican society is due to the drug trafficking, chiefly with the US, and illegally across the border? Who does not know that we, the US, have given rights to El-Salvador and Guatemalan people right to apply for refugee status, and that they are — once caught at the border, promptly released? How is destabilizing these two countries by our meddling, and then taking in refugees, helping us or them?
        But the real sin that Trump committed is this — he wants to pull our forces out of the profit-making schema that is our foreign policy, and use money to repair our crumbling infrastructure, RETURN money to Social Security Fund from which the warmongers are borrowing, and punish the corporations that leave US only to profit from it. Now, these are the sins against the international financial cartels and their deals. Heavens forbid that people are going to find out how they are ripped off, and stop the gravy train of the riches at the expense of our soldiers, their families, and the US citizens.
        Please, do not let yourself be bamboozled by the scary woman. When she talks, one gets a fright. Trump is just human, and is not following the political correctness unwritten rules.
        Scary thing is listening to Hillary talking about the hacking of Democratic election e-mails. She lies, and believes in her lies, as if she is a God, and creates realities. Without flinching, and against all sense, she goes on an Russia diatribe. She blames Russian hackers — but that is not enough for her. She then claims that these were run by the Russian government, that is under full control of Vladimir Putin. She looked like she was going to continue how he is under full control by the Martian federation, and they in turn are controlled by the Orion empire. Her fanaticism is not normal, say what you want. But she would not talk of the e-mails that tell the story of her campaign, and the questions it raises of the legitimacy of her win over Sanders. But Sanders has proven to be not much more then her strategy to reel in some young and disaffected democrats. And they have learned now enough about politics to know — without a wrecking ball, this cabal will stay in power. And there is a good sized one in Donald Trump.

        1. Speaking of latin america, I noticed Republicans made a MAJOR misstep recently. I only just saw that Clinton movie, and it makes a baaaad bad mistake. It keeps trying to tie Clinton and Eva Peron together. Oh, this is such a confusingly bad move, and then to try and run that further and find similarities between their foundations!
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elena_Ceaușescu
          http://www.ce-review.org/99/3/women_lovatt3.html
          There’s a much better comparison out there, (especially in regards to falsely awarding themselves accolades) and I can’t figure out the damn reason it wasn’t used. This is just making the latino voters confused! Clinton’s already taken this colossal fumble and begun running back to the other goal! https://still4hill.com/tag/eva-peron/
          http://www.wnd.com/2016/07/dinesh-dsouza-hillary-is-like-eva-peron/
          http://www.newenglishreview.org/Norman_Berdichevsky/Hillary_%26_Evita_and_their_Respective_Banana_Republics/
          All the crazy nonsense trump has engaged in or baited, it’s nothing compared to this. I about fell through the floor when that movie started dumping comparison after comparison. Oh gods what a screwup. Thank goodness this silly flap over Trump eating chicken with a fork and the back&forth with Khan took focus off the ‘documentary’ for now.

      2. Yup. I think the next step will be the Dems trotting out a Downs syndrome teen to reprimand Trump for whatever. It’s like dangling red meat in front of a tiger, he can’t possibly resist. No reason for Dems not to repeat this if it keep working.

  1. Damn, I sure do feel more and more that it’s a setup. Like that star wars character whose name I don’t remember from a movie I didn’t watch, some kind of general (I saw the parody of it on a Family Guy cartoon with some of the other Seth McFarlane show American Dad) but the line is “it’s a trap”.

    But as previously overstated by moi meme sui, the Leaders and especially the bureaucrats who infest our body politic, well, they’ve got a long history of engineering coups. It’s the fastest way to steal control of territory and enslave cultures, as in “any culture except White Anglo Saxon Protestants” and some of our favorite regime change targets have consistently been Latin America. Mostly because of proximity.

    So are we suddenly faced with the crap decision of well, you know, in a setup for a coup immediately following the election? A national state of emergency brought on by post-election brawling?

  2. How often is it that you pull that little temper tantrum because your comments get caught in an automated filter system and it may be a while before I rescue them? Once a month or so?

    1. As it happens, I’ve noticed that the filters on the blog seem to be less permissive than on other areas of the site. I’ve done what I can to fix that and make it less likely that comments will be held for moderation (they have never, at any point or on any part of the site, been held on account of anti-Zionist sentiments, which as anyone who bothers to read the comments know are both allowed and common here).

    2. I wasn’t able to tell what triggered it. It wasn’t e.g. the inclusion of particular words. I’ve stepped down the settings to a lower level of general vigilance, so hopefully that will fix things and not hold up as many comments. As you may have noticed, yours went right through this time. And it would have even if you had used the word “Ziocons.”

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