Vincent J. Curtis
2 Aug 2016
Khizr Khan, the Gold Star father who attacked Donald Trump
at the Democrat National Convention, now wants to get off the media
merry-go-round. After the uproar he
created at the DNC, Mr. Khan appeared with his wife on ABC, CNN, and MSNBC
networks to continue his pounding of Donald Trump. Now he is expressing the desire to get out of
the limelight as the demand for his time grows.
Khan accused Trump of being “ignorant and arrogant,” of having
“sacrificed nothing and no one,” and of not having read the US
constitution. In particular, Khan
referenced the word “liberty” as it appears in that document. Khan’s beef with Trump is that Trump wants to
halt the immigration of Muslims to the United States, and Khan is a Muslim
himself as was his son. Khan deeply resents
the implication that all Muslims are terrorists because some are.
Ordinarily, a wide berth is given to those suffering from
the grief of having lost a loved one in a war.
We put down the extremity of their accusations as the grief talking, not
clear reason. Most of us. The media, however, play up or downplay the spectacle
of grieving parents as it suits their political agenda, which is relentlessly
Democrat.
Cindy Sheehan for years followed George W. Bush around,
harassing him with the fact that her son died in the war he launched in
Iraq. Sheehan became the media symbol
for Bush’s unpopular war in Iraq. When
Sheehan turned her ire upon Democrats, she fell from the media reportage. She was old news then.
Patricia Smith accuses Hillary Clinton of lying to her face
over the coffin of her dead son, Sean Smith, who was killed in Benghazi. Smith holds Hillary personally responsible
for her son’s death on account of the incompetent management by the Department
in respect of the Benghazi outpost.
Smith was not supposed to be in Benghazi, defenses of the compound were
totally inadequate, and all 600 requests to improve them were ignored.
Except for FoxNews, Smith is ignored in the media, and
Hillary dismisses her allegations as without merit.
The Hillary campaign put up Khizr Khan because they knew
what he would say, and they wanted to shame Trump. Khan did not simply say that he was a Gold
Star father and was voting for Hillary Clinton, who voted for the war that
killed his son. Khan attacked Trump
because of Trump’s stand on Muslim immigration.
Trump’s stand on Muslim immigration is to stop making the
problem worse before the experts can figure out what’s going on. Why are Muslim terrorists attacking America,
and what can be done to stop it? In the
meantime, Syrian refugees are not America’s problem and not of America’s
making, and allowing the immigration of thousands of Syrian Muslims but not
Syrian Christians is simply asking for more trouble.
Only highly educated individuals think Trump’s position is
indefensible, and a lot of Trump’s support comes from blue-collar, high school
educated people who didn’t have their common sense removed at college.
Khan leaves himself wide open for counter attack because he seems
to make substantive allegations. Sheehan
was so obviously a crank that Bush didn’t need to address her, despite the
media coverage. Smith makes fatal substantive
allegations about Hillary’s candidacy, and so the media ignore her and never
press Hillary on the substance of the lying bit. Khan’s accusations against Trump seem to have
substance, until one drills down into the details and makes comparisons. It is then that one can see that the
allegations are lacking in merit and that it is only grief and the “unwritten
rule” that prevents the serious analysis that would dismiss the charges against
Trump and make Khan look foolish.
Trump took the unusual step of addressing the Khans and
responding to their allegations. This
was taken as a violation of the “unwritten rule” that you don’t respond to
grief. But there comes a point at which
you enter the political arena and the Gold Star can no longer be hidden
behind. It ceases to be a shield from
scrutiny. Khan, discovering this, now
wants off the media merry-go-round.
The question will be, will the media let him off? I expect that when he is no longer useful to
Hillary, they will.
-30-
Khan challenged Trump to read the US constitution, and
offered him his copy. Khan said that
Trump should look up the word liberty in it.
Well, the word ‘liberty’ appears in three places, the preamble, and in
the 5th and 14th Amendments. In the 5th and 14th
Amendments, the word liberty appears in reference to a person not being “deprived
of life, liberty, and property, without due process of law.” In the preamble, it states that one of the
purposes of the constitution was to secure liberty. Thus it is not clear what Khan meant by Trump
being ignorant of the constitution. The
matter of freedom of religion (1st Amendment) and of no religious
tests (Article VI) do not apply to immigration policy. Thus it is Khan the Harvard educated lawyer
that seems ignorant of the constitution.
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