Posted: October 31, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2003 Tribune Media Services
OK, here it is. Many readers complain that I never find one good thing to say about President George W. Bush. Well, this is your lucky day.
Are you ready? I agree with President Bush in his double denunciation of remarks made by Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin. "He doesn't reflect my point of view or the point of view of this administration," the president told reporters in the Rose Garden, having earlier dumped on Boykin during his visit to Malaysia.
Boykin's supporters immediately accused the president of turning his back on an American hero and a true Christian warrior. But they are wrong and the president is right.
A 30-year veteran, Boykin does, indeed, have an impressive resume. He rose from a Delta Force commando to command of the Army's Special Forces. Recently, he was named undersecretary of defense for intelligence, charged with leading the hunt for Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. The problem is, he comes to his job as an intolerant, religious zealot.
Boykin became the darling of the religious right by giving dozens of speeches in churches across the country in which he described the war on terror as a holy war, pitting the forces of good, or Christianity, versus the forces of evil, or Islam. As quoted by the Los Angeles Times and NBC News, Boykin sounds like Bernard of Clairvaux, dispatching medieval crusaders to the Holy Land to kill for Jesus.
"We in the army of God, in the house of God, kingdom of God have been raised for such a time as this," he told an Oregon congregation last year. The reason terrorists hate us is "because we're a Christian nation … and the enemy is a guy named Satan." And, says the general, foes like Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein "will only be defeated if we go after them in the name of Jesus."
But Boykin isn't content with bragging that ours is a Christian army. He insists that only the Christian God is real; the Muslim God is phony. Describing his encounter with a Somali warlord, Boykin said: "My God is bigger than his God. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol."
No wonder the president's miffed. How can he convince the world's Muslims to join us in waging a war on terror when one of his top generals says Muslims worship a false God? Gen. Boykin is the American echo of Osama bin Laden – with one difference. Bin Laden says it's a holy war between God's Muslims versus Satan's Christians and Jews. Boykin says it's a holy war between God's Christians and Jews versus Satan's Muslims. They're both religious bigots.
Boykin's comments immediately raise two questions: Does he have a right to say it? Answer: Yes! And is he right to say it? Answer: No!
Of course, as an American, Boykin has a right to say whatever he wants. He can say that every Muslim is a child of Satan and going straight to hell, if that's what he believes. And, apparently, he does.
But is he right to say so? Hell, no. Especially not when his commander in chief has stressed over and over again that our beef is not with Islam, but with those extremists who twist a peaceful religion into a violent one and use Islam as an excuse for the slaughter of innocents.
That's where Boykin's Christian supporters miss the point. This is not a question of freedom of speech or religion. This is a question of military discipline. Boykin took an oath to uphold the Constitution, not the Bible. When the commander in chief declares that the war on terror is not a war on Islam, no member of the military has the right to appear in public, in uniform, and say just the opposite.
Gen. Boykin is now under investigation for insubordination by the Pentagon's inspector general. That's the good news. The bad news is that, despite a request from Republican Sen. John Warner that the general be sidelined pending results of the investigation, Secretary Rumsfeld has allowed Boykin to stay on the job.
That's a big mistake. You don't need a six-month investigation to know that
Boykin publicly and repeatedly undercut his commander in chief. Rumsfeld should
fire Gen. Boykin immediately. The president can never win the war on terror as
long as one of his top generals is working against
him.
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