Does sacrifice in pursuit of strategic stupidity make sense? — Regarding Khizr Khan’s speech at the Democratic National Convention

© 2016 Peter Free

02 August 2016

 

Khizr Khan landed a good one Donald Trump’s blabbering jaw — but his piercing words buried an even more important point

Army captain Humayun Khan was blown up in Iraq in 2004. His father, Khizr Khan, spoke at the Democratic National Convention last week.

Using his son’s death as a basis for comparison, Mr. Khan memorably speared arch narcissist Donald Trump‘s selfish and bigoted ways.

Mr. Khan did not question the American purpose in Iraq or anywhere else. To do so would arguably have undermined the similar sacrifice of others. Thus, the larger point about the United States’ perennially destabilizing warmongering was missed. As the convention organizers probably intended.  Talk of patriotism and sacrifice frequently conceals profit-seeking.

 

The moral? — It feels good to lash out at airheads like Donald Trump, but we would be better off examining the vacuities in our own

People often think that if we admit that a specific war was a strategic mistake, the troops who died in it will have passed to no purpose. Yet such cannot be true.

Duty, honor, courage and commitment are personal virtues. Personal merit is not dependent upon our leaders’ rectitude. We can admit that Captain Khan died with courageous merit in a strategically misguided war.

Rather than using Humayun's Khan's battle death just to skewer Donald Trump’s obvious lack of thoughtfulness, we could also use it to examine the wisdom of pursuing war for its own sake.