Army Capt. Humayun Khan, was killed in action during an extended tour in Iraq. Deployed at Baquabah, Khan served in a force protection role, and oversaw a unit securing and maintaining his base. June 8, 2004, Khan died after ordering his soldiers to stay back, and “hit the dirt,” when he approached a suspicious taxi. While Khan was moving towards the vehicle, and motioning for it to stop, two men in the taxi detonated their explosives, killing themselves, Khan, and two Iraqi soldiers. Because of his heroic sacrifice, none of Khan’s soldiers were killed in the blast. When Khan was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery, he received full military honors at the burial, and his commanding officer observed in a letter,
He died selflessly and courageously, tackling the enemy head on. We will not forget him and the noble ideas he stood for.
Simply put, Humayun Khan died defending the uniquely Western conceptions of freedom articulated in the US Constitution, and Bill of Rights.
All Americans must acknowledge and honor the Khan family’s grief as parents of a heroic soldier killed in action. Their anguished perspective requires especial deference. But we should also take seriously the assertions made by Khizr Khan, Humayun’s father, and a lawyer, about the Constitution, at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) convention, which are contradicted by Khizr Khan’s earlier published opinions. Many Americans have their own copies of the Constitution (readers can get your own pocket Constitution here, for free, via Hillsdale College), and they know that Khizr Khan, perhaps in his lingering sorrow, egregiously misrepresented what our founding document states regarding immigration in the 14th amendment, as discussed recently by Byron York.
It was no doubt unintentional on Khizr Khan’s part that he appeared to attack the large majority of ordinary Americans who are concerned about the DNC’s support for admitting immigrants into the US without background checks (adequate databases for vetting Syrian Muslim refugees, as a prime example, don’t exist), even from countries with known risks for harboring jihad terrorists (i.e., like Syria). Americans want to disagree without being disagreeable, and being hectored that we have “black souls,” or lack compassion. We can have genuine, deep sympathy for the Khan family’s loss, and still disagree with Khizr Khan’s misrepresentation of the Constitution. With all due respect for his deprivation, we must review, gimlet-eyed, Mr. Khan’s published articles asserting the supremacy of Sharia over other politico-legal systems—opinions that are antithetical to the principles in the Constitution that he waved at Americans during his DNC convention address—and his own son died fighting to preserve.