What Khizr Khan Said That Wasn't About Trump and You Probably Won't Hear

As the United States this week expands its bombing campaign against the Islamic State (ISIS) to Libya, Khizr Khan, the Gold Star father who gave a powerful anti-Donald Trump speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), has criticized U.S. wars in Muslim nations as leaving us in a “quagmire,” “more vulnerable,” and creating “chaos for ourselves.” But Khan’s take on the war on terror is unlikely to be amplified by corporate media, as one political writer points out.

Khan, a Muslim, Pakistani-American, and father of a U.S. Army captain who was killed in Iraq in 2004, made waves last week for his speech at the DNC. Standing beside his wife, Ghazala, he directed his criticism at the Republican presidential nominee, and said, “You have sacrificed nothing and no one,” and asked, “Have you even read the United States Constitution?”

As the New Yorker‘s Amy Davidson wrote, “Khan, though his speech centered on the loss of his son, had made the case against Trump more powerfully than almost any other speaker.”

Since the convention, Khan “has become something of a media celebrity,” writes Ben Norton, politics staff writer at Salon. The portrayal often used in these accounts, Norton continues, focuses on patriotism. One such example can be seen here, as posted on CNN Money on Tuesday:

Here was an in-the-flesh example of Muslim assimilation—a man who had lost his son, yet who espoused patriotism to the point of literally brandishing a pocket-sized copy of the Constitution. Not only was the couple’s grief universal and relatable, but the Khans put a face on Muslims who are pursuing the American Dream just as countless other ethnicities have done.

On Monday, the same day the U.S. started its new campaign in Libya—a move one antiwar group said will only further “entrench divisions and intensify violence” in the region—the Khans gave an interview on MSNBC‘s “Hardball.”

Asked by host Chris Matthews, “What do you think when you, or feel, when you see us attack Iraq or go into Afghanistan after Osama bin Laden, or we go attack with bombs Libya? We’re bombing Syria now—all Islamic countries. What do you feel as an Islamic man?”

Khizr Khan replied, “As a Muslim-American, not just as Islamic man—as a Muslim American, I feel that these policies are not in the interest of United States of America, and we see the result of it. We are more vulnerable now. We have created a chaos and—for ourselves.”

“Well, you know you’re speaking to the choir,” Matthews responded. (In fact, “Matthews’ record isn’t entirely consistent” on being against either the war in Iraq or on avoiding a military approach to confronting ISIS, Norton notes.)