Organizing for America | Kizyr for Obama: Here We Go Again

Here We Go Again

By Kaiser Farooque - Nov 2nd, 2008 at 12:30 am EDT

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Tags: Khalidi

NOTE: This post is both on my Xanga site and the smaller blog I've started up on my Kizyr for Obama page.

I'm coming back from a business trip this past week, so I'll keep this short. There's just one minor thing I wanted to air some grievances about...

What does the McCain campaign have against professors? First it was Ayers (all the nonsense about him and the connection to Obama is already explained in full elsewhere). Now it's Rashid Khalidi (more information about that is here, but I was going to go in a slightly different direction about that).

Let me start by clarifying a few things...

Obama knows who Khalidi is, yes. But knowing someone does not mean you agree with him (otherwise, everyone who knows me would be out-of-luck with politics for the rest of their lives). Guilt-by-association is the basic principle behind bigotry and prejudice, and it's troubling that it's coming from a Presidential candidate in this day.
The International Republican Institute, while McCain was chairman, provided $500,000 worth of grants to the Center for Palestine Research and Studies, co-founded by Khalidi. So, both candidates have some tie to him. And, both ties are meaningless compared to the candidates' own views.
Obama has articulated over and over his "unshakeable" commitment to Israel. It's one of the few things on which I disagree with him (I believe we need to seriously revisit our relationship with both Israel and Saudi Arabia). But, my overall view of Obama is still such that I support him regardless of that disagreement.

Anyway, what gets me the most is that McCain and Palin are going off on Khalidi and accusing him of... being a Palestinian. They've got nothing more than that--apparently your race and ability to articulate serious problems with the Israeli government and criticism of the US-Israel relationship is enough to make you evil. This ignores the fact that Khalidi was born and raised in New York, and it ignores the fact that the First Amendment protects your right to criticize the government--and that means any government. Your First Amendment rights are not dependent on your political beliefs, nor your race...

What worries me is that it's the sworn duty of the President to uphold the Constitution. That includes the entire Constitution--no picking-and-choosing which Articles or Amendments you like. This is where there's another contrast between the McCain-Palin and Obama-Biden tickets, and one of the main things that drew me to support Barack Obama in the first place: Obama's the kind to draw upon his experience teaching constitutional law and defending civil rights, while McCain and Palin continue to demonstrate their lack of understanding of the Constitution. Yet again, I think the choice is clear. KF

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