Captain Humayun Khan (1976-2004) of the US Army is one of 14 Muslim American soldiers who have died in defence of the US since 9/11. He died in Baqubah, Iraq, a city north of Baghdad that Sunni jihadists were trying to take over under the leadership of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda’s top man in Iraq.
On the morning of June 8th 2004, while his men were guarding the gates of the US Army base at Baqubah, an orange taxi drove up. Khan told his men to hit the ground as he walked toward the taxi. He took ten steps – and then the taxi blew up. He died, but by stopping it he saved hundreds of lives, not just his own men, but Iraqis too.
For dying in defence of America he won a Purple Heart. For saving so many lives he won a Bronze Star.
He was laid to rest with full military honours in Arlington Cemetary, where President John Kennedy is buried, across the river from Washington, DC.
Khan’s parents are from Pakistan. He was born in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and came to America, to Silver Spring, Maryland, at age two.
On December 2nd 2015, two Muslim American jihadists killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California. Donald Trump, then running for president, called for:
“a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.”
On July 29th 2016, Captain Khan’s parents appeared before the Democratic National Convention. His father said:
We were blessed to raise our three sons in a nation where they were free to be themselves and follow their dreams. Our son, Humayun, had dreams of being a military lawyer. But he put those dreams aside the day he sacrificed his life to save the lives of his fellow soldiers.
Hillary Clinton was right when she called my son ‘the best of America.’ If it was up to Donald Trump, he never would have been in America.
Donald Trump consistently smears the character of Muslims. He disrespects other minorities, women, judges, even his own party leadership. He vows to build walls and ban us from this country.
Donald Trump, you are asking Americans to trust you with our future. Let me ask you: Have you even read the U.S. Constitution?
he pulls his copy of the Constitution out of his pocket and holds it up (pictured above):
I will gladly lend you my copy. In this document, look for the words ‘liberty’ and ‘equal protection of law.’
Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery? Go look at the graves of the brave patriots who died defending America – you will see all faiths, genders, and ethnicities. You have sacrificed nothing and no one.
Donald Trump avoided service in the Vietnam War with six draft deferments. None of his children have served in the military.
Fox News, the most nakedly Islamophobic news station on US television, cut away from the speech.
– Abagond, 2016.
See also:
- 9/11
- Iraq
- jihad
- 2016 election for US president
- Fox News
- Islamophobia
- Larycia Hawkins
- Are Christians more violent than Muslims? – the most misunderstood post on this blog. People are that blinded by their Islamophobia!
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I wonder how many TV stations in America actually cut away from the Martin Luther King “I have a Dream” speech? Think about it. I know some stations recorded it for the sake of ‘records’ but perhaps the speech was muted….. Maybe you can ask some honest people if they actually saw that speech air in its entirety including sound.
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That is true of most beltway insiders and top Ten Percenters in this country. They are consumed in an orgy of nepotism and greed—-to them, sacrifice is for the “little people”.
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I am no fan of Donald Trump but I think that there is a fair amount of misrepresentation of his statements when people criticize him. In his quoted statement Donald Trump did not threaten Muslim Americans. What he called for was a moratorim on IMMIGRATION from Muslim countries until there was a process he was confident in to ensure that terrorists do not enter too. There is no constitutional right to emigrate to the United States so appealing to the constitution is not an effective rebuttal in this case.
In fact a law actually says:
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2011-title8/html/USCODE-2011-title8-chap12-subchapII-partII-sec1182.htm
There are a whole lot of “any”s there so I’d guess that Trump would be well within his authority as president. Obviously, one can debate whether it would be prudent or proper to suspend immigration from all muslim countries as a precaution against radical islamic terrorism. However the argument that Trump would be disrespecting the law doesn’t seem like a strong one in this case.
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“I am no fan of Donald Trump but…”
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This is how Trump responded on twitter:
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The USA already had a century’s worth experience of exclusion acts. Did they learn nothing from that? or did that already pass into the teflon pre-history?
The question is not whether a president has the authority to issue such an order.
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Thank you!
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@abagond
“I am no fan of Donald Trump but…”
LOL.
Fair enough. Perhaps it wasn’t wise to try to immunize myself.
I don’t consider myself a fan. However, I had to start taking a more dispassionate view of him now that he could legitimately become president and the major alternative is a warmonger like Hillary Clinton.
She voted for the Iraq war in which this man’s son died despite Iraq’s tenuous links to 9/11, ISIS flourished in the resulting power vacuum under the watch of the current administration, and she created further instability in the region by being a major proponent of deposing Libya’s Qadaffi despite warnings from generals (according to Wikileads).
Yet the narrative being woven, through Khan’s emotional story, is that Trump is a worse guy and is more dangerous for Muslims because of what he has said. Apart from that, it was strongly implied that Trump had suggested illegal goverment action that would be against the constitution.
But I haven’t heard Trump say that Muslim Americans should lose their rights as citizens. Also most Muslims do not live in the United States but in countries Hillary and Obama like destabilizing. So is Hillary going to explain why she is not dangerous? No, because the core strategy is to demonize Trump for votes. So I have started asking myself whether that much fear of Trump is rational.
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My heart went out to Humayun Khan’s parents maybe his father was right about Trump “You have sacrificed nothing.” I believe that is true.
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Also, this is kind of OT, but if I seem more fair-minded towards Trump recently it’s partially because I’ve been reminded of the need. Let me elaborate. I started to pay more attention to the candidates and, for Trump especially, I wanted to get context to some of the soundbites. One day I saw a youtube video titled “Fact-checking Trump’s insult-filled speech” which intrigued me so I clicked on it and noticed it was from MSNBC. I started watching.
It began this way:
Before reading the rest of my comment, try to fill in the blank.
I thought the logical follow-up was that Trump was comfortable speaking off the cuff so he only needed an outline of a 1 hour speech. This was the actual conclusion of the sentence: “they new that’s all he can manage. That’s all he can handle. One piece of paper.”
I was literally floored. That’s one of the most ridiculous things I’d ever heard. Is Lawrence O’Donnell actually trying to say that Trump was not capable of reading a 20 page speech if he wanted to? Everyone knows it’s harder to speak extemporaneously. I was so insulted that I closed the window without watching the rest.
[Here’s the video for reference: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47vU8ku4sAw) ]
Then, of course, you have the famous DNC email leak which nakedly exposed some of what takes place behind the scenes. Here is part of an email sent by the DNC’s national press secretary Mark Paustenbach (emphasis mine).
https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/11056
I always knew the media were “presstitutes”, as one author likes to say, but it really underscored the need to look past their narrative and to form opinions from the available facts. I’ve applied that to Mr. Trump as well, always asking whether the slant of reports accurately reflect what he meant. For example, there was a recent storm in a teacup that he was treasonously encouraging Russia to hack American computers when he was obviously sarcastically deriding Hillary Clinton for deleting 30,000 emails when she was under investigation. The irony is that Russia would be archiving records America’s own Secretary of State declined to. If Russia already has the emails I want to see them too.
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@ Origin
Trump did say he wants to put certain mosques under surveillance:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-idUSKCN0Z12AS
As to the point that Captain Khan’s father was making, yes, strictly speaking, the US Constitution does not apply to people not yet in the country, but banning a whole religion certainly goes against the spirit of its promise of freedom of religion.
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@abagond
“Trump did say he wants to put certain mosques under surveillance”
Mosque surveillance actually happened under both Bush and Obama.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2015/12/court-mulls-fbi-mosque-surveillance-216529
Perhaps Trump talks too much and should just do controversial things without telling us he will like ordinary politicians. The flipside is that I’m more willing to believe that he’s actually speaking his mind unlike Hillary who I always suspect is just saying what she thinks her audience wants to hear.
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Correction. The particular operation, Flex, did not take place under Obama (though Edward Snowden revealed even more extensive general domestic spying). However, the Obama administration was defending against legal challenges arising from it.
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@ Origin
Move those goalposts!
First it was:
and now it is:
Wow. Why are you making excuses for him? I doubt this is what is meant by the word “dispassionate”.
BOTH Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are saying what they think will get them elected. We know that because they have changed their stated positions in politically convenient directions, Trump much more so. So this idea that Trump is “speaking his mind” is a fantasy. If anything, it is Clinton who is being more “honest” since she has been more consistent over the years. She is not the one with an 11th hour conversion on abortion or David Duke.
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That’s not moving goalposts; that’s saying two unrelated things.
1)I hadn’t heard him saying Muslims Americans shouldn’t have full rights as American citizens
2)I think he creates a better impression of being frank.
Finally, I definitely don’t think Hillary has been “consistent” at all.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-brasunas/hillary-clinton-says-its-_b_9825650.html
Hell No.
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@ Origin
I stand corrected: you did not move goalposts. You are just making excuses for Donald Trump.
In your quest to be dispassionate, you should look into how Donald Trump has been inconsistent too.
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@ Origin
I did not say Hillary Clinton was “consistent”. I said she was “more consistent” than Donald Trump.
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@abagond
“I did not say Hillary Clinton was “consistent”. I said she was “more consistent” than Donald Trump.”
They’ve both been inconsistent and Clinton has recently been caught in lies pertaining to official conduct as Secretary of State. It’s really hard for me to rank them. However, Trump creates a better impression of being a straigh-shooter while Hillary often feels evasive. To a simple question like “will you be honest” she might say, “I’ll try to be”. In my opinion, she doesn’t even suspend disbelief.
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@ Origin
That just means Trump is a better liar.
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I think he is. So other factors would have to come to bear in the choice between a good liar and slightly worse liar. What an unenviable choice for the nation.
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I agree with Origin. I don’t like Trump, but I can recognize the media smear happening when I see it. It’s frightening to see so many of the Republican Karl Rove tactics being used by Democrats.
My takeaway is for many people the stuff they were “outraged” under Bush II are things they make mental gymnastics to defend under Democratic leadership. It’s intellectually dishonest at best, and just downright hypocritical at worse.
– I was against needless wars and the politics of fear under G W Bush… I am against such policies when Clinton promises to do more of the same.
– I was against voter suppression (removing names off the rolls, closing polling locations and hours, voter ID laws) under the Republicans… I am against such actions under the DNC state offices/Democratic leadership.
– I was against economic policies that favor big business under Republicans.. I am against such policies under Democrats (Obama’s support of the TPP, Hillarys flip-flop when she supports it too)
Trump is not the guy I want to vote for. So I won’t. Clinton is not the woman I want to vote for. So I won’t. Long term, looking past the next 4 years I think Clinton will be worst for our country. I can’t condone the cheating, underhanded tactics her teams used against a democratic opponent and if we reward her with votes we won’t be able to root the corruption out of our party. Being Republican-lite is unacceptable, but voting for Hillary lets them know there are no boundaries they can’t cross — the Left are sheep and our voices, concerns, and actually having a democratic process can be ignored by party insiders.
Voting by fear — the lesser of two evils — is something democrats have been doing since the 80s and it doesn’t work. The New Democrats left the working class and poor behind when they moved the party toward newloiberalism. It’s just as dangerous as neoconservatism folks. Clinton embodies that cancer, sickness spreading from the inside of our party.
There are no good solution, just hard choices. Under Trump, he’ll have people,in the Left and Right holding his feet to fire. The the balance of power of the 3 branches of government (Legislative and Judical checks Executive power) will block any plans that are unconstitutional. Under Clinton, the cancer spreads and with no pushback from Congress some pretty scary bills will be signed into law. Bernie supporters and Progressives will be retaliated against (she’s done this before — Google Clinton enemies list. She got the idea from when she worked for Nixon!) and our chances to reform the party from the inside will be next to nil.
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@Greyson
Exactly. I know Hillary will have the bipartisan support needed to pursue her political agenda. Also, refusing to vote for a president you don’t want, resulting in a president Dems don’t want, could draw a line in the sand that allows a decent candidate to make his or her way through the process in four years. As you said, there is no pleasant solution just “hard choices”.
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You two (Origin/Greyson) act as if not voting will somehow have an effect as to rooting out corruption. But it won’t, there is no logical link of “not voting” towards “they will have less corruption”. Not voting isn’t a vote for anything, since lots of people in the country already don’t vote. If it’s 5 percent less voter participation because of all the corruption, eh, who cares?
It just means you don’t understand democracy, which yes, sometimes is a choice between two really shitty choices. Often, even; always, maybe. You’ve both got a really weird idea about kind of pulling out of the system, somehow not being responsible if you just don’t vote; but this is your country and you won’t fix it like this.
“Not voting” doesn’t exist. It just means “eh whatever I don’t want to make a choice”. It’s cowardly, it acts as if you could remove your reponsibility from the immediate things that will come out of this. It’s saying “oh yeah I’ll just let other people decide and roll with it”, while you *believe* it’s saying “oh yeah other people made the choice, not me, so I may now complain a lot about having only shitty choices!”
Newsflash. Everyone does. Few people are happy with politicians. Deal with it as an adult, ffs.
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@Greyson
“Under Trump, he’ll have people,in the Left and Right holding his feet to fire. The the balance of power of the 3 branches of government (Legislative and Judical checks Executive power) will block any plans that are unconstitutional.”
You make some good points about the similarities between the Dems and the Repubs.
I think you should factor in the penchant for violence by Trump supporters and his gleeful manipulation of their violence. Attacking (physical assaults or worse) legislators and judges will not be unthinkable for his base of support. They have already divided the world in to black and white, them or us and they will know no boundaries in their quest to threaten, intimidate or beat down Trump’s opponents.
The balance of power mechanism has been eroded by both the Dems and the Repubs over the past three decades. I’m not sure if it will be a real deterrent to Trump’s or HRClinton’s plans.
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@Natanji
There are choices beyond voting for one of the two or not voting. I think there are reasonable arguments for supporting neither.
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One could argue that it’s the most reasonable thing to do if you dislike both candidates. They both have high unfavorable ratings but I guess most people will vote for one of them. They consider it too idealistic to do otherwise. Such pragmatism, if maintained indefinitely, could end up making the choice completely irrelevant.
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You are like Trump: you don’t give a logical argument, but call an argument “reasonable” when it is just based on your own feeling, on how people “consider” things. You talk about pragmatism as if it was bad, using a slippery slope argument.
Since slippery slope arguments are just logical fallacies, please do enlighten us all on what benefit is logically gained by not voting at all. I still firmly believe that this is a choice between two, made arguments about why I think this is the case, and you just ignored all of my reasoning.
Attack my reasoning with your own reasoning, please. Or write your own actual reasoning, not something based on “liking” or “disliking” candidates. I disliked pretty much every single option in our German elections, I hated every single chancellor we’ve had, and I still voted and think this was a good thing to do.
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@Natanji
Good point.
Yes, the decision not to vote is the lazy cowardly option.
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@Natanji
I said: “There are choices beyond voting for one of the two or not voting.”
That is a fact. There is nothing to debate about.
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@Natanji
“Since slippery slope arguments are just logical fallacies, please do enlighten us all on what benefit is logically gained by not voting at all.”
You accuse me of ignoring you when it’s clear you didn’t read what I wrote despite it being only few sentences. I won’t continue to engage as that would be a waste of my time.
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BTW, slippery slope arguments are not necessarily fallacious. Certainly, if we take the term literally, it’s reasonable to expect that if someone slips onto a waterslide they will continue to the bottom because of the incline and the flowing water. It’s only fallacious if there is no logical connection between the action and the consquence.
A big issue this election is that there are two candidates from the major political parties that have massive unfavorability ratings with many people voting for one because they hate the other more. We are already facing the scenario I described wherein it isn’t felt that there is a real choice at all.
I asserted that maintenance of the status quo will result in continuance of the situation over time thereby intensifying it. There is no illogical leap there in my opinion. Why would the DNC, for example, be discouraged from repeating a tactic that worked?
Bye.
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On second thought I’ll give you a benefit of the doubt as you may have misunderstood me when I said, “I think there are reasonable arguments for supporting neither”. It might not have been clear that I meant neither Trump nor Clinton.
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@jefe
“Good point.
Yes, the decision not to vote is the lazy cowardly option.”
While it’s not my position, I don’t agree with this entirely negative assessment of the decision not to vote. Personally, I think people should vote if at all possible especially those who belong to groups which have been historically disenfranchised.
However, I can’t say in a blanket way that conscientous refusal to vote is cowardly. People have differing frameworks from which they arrive at their decisions and some people cannot support candidates whose policy positions go against deeply held beliefs.
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Humayun Khan is indeed a hero! He was a Pakistani with Mongolian influence. Khan came from the Moguls (Mongolian origin).
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