Allah and Man at Yale

Please join me in an enormous leap of faith. Imagine that opposition to the management of our ports by an Arab country is founded, not in racist pandering, but rather in genuine, carefully considered security concerns. Does it not make sense then that these same politicians will aim their newfound interest in securing the homeland toward a real and present danger - our elite academic institutions?
While insertion of terrorists through our ports remains a theoretical concern, the uncomfortable fact remains that the 9/11 terrorists gained entry through our airports and lived here for months with legitimate, US State Department issued student visas. No bombs were smuggled into the United States hidden in cargo holds or shipping containers. All the resources the terrorists needed were freely available to anyone. Before pursuing phantoms, shouldn’t we slam that gate shut before any more bad guys slip through?
This is of particular interest considering that Yale University boasted recently that it had recruited and enrolled a prominent former official of the Taliban regime that sheltered and protected Osama bin Laden, his headquarters and his terrorist training camps.
In a New York Times Sunday magazine article late last month, Yale declared that it was delighted to have among its student body, the Taliban’s former deputy foreign secretary, Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, a man whose academic credentials include an education that took him all the way through the fourth grade. Yale was particularly pleased to land Hashemi because another equally stellar student had recently slipped through its fingers. Yale recruited him but, "we lost him to Harvard," and "I didn't want that to happen again," lamented Richard Shaw, Yale's dean of undergraduate admissions.
Dr. Shaw sounds as proud as a football coach who just inked a highly recruited running back to a letter of intent.
I wonder if anyone will go to the trouble of finding out whom, of similar credentials, Harvard snared.
Surely New York’s junior senator, Hillary Clinton, who has suddenly begun taking her cues from talk radio’s premier right wing rhetorical arsonist, Michael Savage, and unashamedly invoked xenophobia to oppose the port deal, will also act with equal alacrity to protect us from Ivy League schools that are facilitating terrorist infiltration.
Although, she might just be waiting until she and he husband can find a way to profit from it. While Hillary was loudly condemning the port deal, her husband, whom she knew had been paid $600,000 by the emirate, was advising the UAE on how to get the deal done. A cynic might conclude that the Clintons were playing both sides to maximize fiduciary and political gain. Actually, one would not have to be cynical to conclude that. The Clintons supply all the cynicism required.
Yale’s embrace of Mr. Hashemi is particularly ironic as it came at a time when Yale was challenging the right of United States military recruiters to set foot on the holy ground of its campus. Yale wanted recruiters off campus because the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on homosexuals (another Clinton creation) conflicted with its ethics.
The Taliban didn’t kick homosexuals out of the military. They executed them. Talibanis are welcome, even prized, at Yale, but the U.S. Army isn’t. Go figure. I guess you have to be a really smart Ivy League graduate, like Mrs. Clinton, to understand.
Oddly, the tale of the Yale Talibani has received little attention, either in the media or in the halls of Congress. It stands to reason that if Arabs cutting paychecks to longshoreman threatens national security, then bringing Talibanis into the country on students visas, just like the good old pre-9/11 days should deserve some notice and a Congressional chest pounding or two.
A security conscious Congress might want to take a look at the State Department while they’re at it. How could a prominent official of a terrorist state obtain a valid student visa? Well, perhaps it’s because the State Department is infested with people like the recently resigned Ann Wright.
While addressing a cheering U.C. San Diego meeting of College Democrats, Ms. Wright, a 16-year diplomatic veteran, ventriloquized Osama bin Laden and blamed terrorism upon our “over the top” lifestyles, oil dependency, our over consumption of the Earth’s resources.
“We’re sucking things up,” she declared.
I think I’d trust Dubai businessmen before I’d trust Yale admissions directors or career diplomats.