Shortly after posting my question about how on earth Taliban Man, a.k.a. Sayed Rhmatullah Hashemi, got a visa so he could actually attend Yale I received an email from Clint Taylor of the Nail Yale Blog at Townhall with a few answers.  Not all of the answers mind you, because most of these people aren’t talking to anybody, but some.  Lets take a look at what is known.

Turns out Taliban Man got no less than three visas to enter the U.S. on his way to starting classes.  Go read the post at this link to see the detail, but here’s a summary.  Boiling it down a lot, Mr. Taliban made friends with a Yalie CBS cameraman named Mike Hoover who spent considerable effort and funds to help set up a PR tour for him before 9/11 where he met and formed relationships with some other Yalies, who decided to sponsor him for admission into Yale.

Now, why on earth did the State Department authorize those visas, all three of them?   Apparently we can thank Senator Ted Kennedy for the dubious honor of Taliban Man’s entry.  Again you will want to go read the post and some links for the full detail, but it boils down to that Teddy wanted to let IRA sympathizers into the U.S., like the infamous Gerry Adams.  The State Department was following its guidelines presumably, and thus allowed in the terrorist sympathizing Taliban PR man to Yale.

The rules aren’t that easy however, as the State Department is choosing to bar entry from an Iraqi boxer who defended the U.S. on Al-Jazeera TV.  The difference is striking, and it raises some serious questions about the priorities of the State Department in its approval process for visas.

The last little nugget of information is that the State Department is saying that the visas were approved by some sort of automated process or system and as a result "there was no oversight."   What this means exactly is not crystal clear, but it sounds to me like they are claiming deniability over making any sort of judgment at all by placing blame on an automated system that apparently did not have the name Sayed Rhmatullah Hashemi on it and so automatically approved his visas.  Its a screw up somewhere in the formation of this list if true because Mr. Taliban was one of the most visible members of the Taliban government that we went to war against and are still fighting.  One would presume that career State Department people who are actually there in the region would know enough about the key people, not everyone mind you, but the key people in the Taliban leadership so that they’d at least recognize his name and maybe kick it up the chain a bit when he bizarrely passes the automated system.  Guess not.

The last link Clint sent me was to his post where he lists the Trustees for the Yale Corporation.  It so happens the Board is shortly due to meet.  The Board of Trustees could exercise some judgment and send Mr. Taliban back home.  If you care about this issue enough to still be reading this far into the post, please go to this link for the information needed to spend a few minutes and send out some (e)mail that might make a difference.

Reflections:

Reading through the various posts and articles provided by Clint I got an understanding of what these people who brought Taliban Man to Yale are thinking.  What are they thinking?  As I understand from reports they think they are ‘opening channels of dialog and understanding’.  That’s not a quote, none of the following is, its my take on what I see the thought process being.  They think they are doing what every ‘good liberal’ thinks is the solution to all of the conflict in the world:  to exchange views and share common humanity to form bonds that dissolve the fears that prevent universal human reason and empathy from allowing the involved parties to find a mutually agreeable compromise.  You know, like former President Jimmy Carter did back in the 1990’s when he made that just spiffy deal to stop North Korea’s nuclear arms development.  All it took was human understanding and trust to come to a deal.

Of course among the oh so many problems with that whole strategy is that it assumes universal human goodwill, that everybody is just eagerly waiting for someone to say ‘I like you, I accept you, and you’re OK", after which they will in good faith use logic to make a deal that they will of course then faithfully implement.  Some people are like that, but the problem is that among those are NOT the totalitarian rulers of a fanatic regime, religious or otherwise.  People like that tend to be, oh I don’t know, RUTHLESS, AMORAL, and DECEPTIVE.  Like the North Koreans who continued to develop nuclear weapons while they were negotiating with Carter, and then continued to develop nuclear weapons in secret despite the deal they had agreed to where they were being bribed to stop.  The North Koreans smiled, took the money and resources, and kept right on working on their Nukes.  Jimmy still hasn’t learned from his mistakes, because he can’t acknowledge them without losing his entire view of the world so he just doesn’t see them and continues on as if what he is doing is working.

Fanatic or dictatorial regime leadership don’t ‘dialog’ in good faith, or honestly present their views or intentions, and they certainly don’t keep any deals that don’t benefit them far more than you.  They take what they can get peacefully and openly from diplomatic fools, and then break every element of the agreement that conflicts with their true desires while they pursue their true goals of domination and power.  Liberals can’t accept this because if they do their pacifist ideals die, and they can’t face that.

The key problem of Left/Liberal thinkers is that they are classic geeks:  they live too much in the ideal worlds in their heads while failing to understand or develop the skills to deal with the real people around them.  The next time you see your standard pointy headed intellectual liberal just realize they are a geek, and their beliefs will make more sense to you.

I think this is the thought process going on with the people who actively solicited Taliban Man to come to Yale, and most especially of those now defending the action.  They think anyone who questions the move is just a stupid fearful ‘patriot’ (i.e. violent sadistic fascist redneck) who isn’t educated enough to understand how diplomacy really works to solve human conflict.  They think we are too paranoid and ignorant to understand the power of peaceful dialog and logic.  The truth is that they are too blinded by their ideals to cope with real world psychopaths.

Its a classic pre-9/11 end-of-history-can’t-we-all-sing-kumbayah-and-get-along sort of thought process, and its dead bang in there with pacifist liberal ‘thinking’ since the 1960’s.

They’re not going to change their minds now so the only way they send Taliban Man packing is if the costs are just too high compared to the perceived value of the effort and their beliefs in their principles.   I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for a change.