Is General Boykin a Mouthpiece for President Bush?

From all counts General William Boykin is going to keep his job as deputy under secretary of defense for intelligence. He is the one, you will recall, who has been indulging in a juvenile pissing contest by declaring that his God is bigger than the God of Muslims and that by implication the other God is in reality Satan. You would think he was a teenager comparing the instrument of his manhood with other teenagers behind the barn.

For the past number of years the General has been going around the country, often dressed in official uniform, preaching his gospel of hatred and intolerance against Islam to congregations in evangelical churches around the country. He said, “America’s enemy is ‘spiritual enemy’ called Satan. The enemy will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus”.

He also credits divine intervention in getting George Bush to the White House. ‘Why is (George Bush) in the White House?’ he asks rhetorically. ‘The majority of Americans did not vote for him. I tell you this morning that he is in the White House because God put him there.”

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001 the president took pains to reassure the world and a very jittery and anxious America that the enemy was not Islam or Muslims but those who pervert the teachings of their religion to commit crimes against us. He called Islam a religion of peace. However he used powerful religious imagery to paint the struggle between right and wrong. “Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty,” he said on 9/11, ‘”have always been at war and we know that God is not neutral between them”. General Boykin seems to have narrowed down that choice and identified the evil. Perhaps General Boykin is doing what he thinks his commander-in-chief wants him to do. And the commander-in-chief ain’t talking or elaborating.

In the past I have on these pages drawn attention to the cozy but unholy relationship that our president and his advisors have with some of the avowed critics. I call them enemies of Islam. The likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Franklin Graham do not condemn only the terrorists, as many of us do without any hesitation, but the very foundation and the edifice of the religion itself. If President Bush really believed that it is not the religion but some of its wayward and misguided followers, who have caused and continue to cause mayhem, he would have distanced himself from those purveyors of intolerance and would have condemned their vitriolic attacks against Islam and Muslims. He has not.

His lukewarm treatment of General Boykin’s conduct is the same he has for his right wing supporters. His response in the past has been that the evangelists do not represent his administration’s view. Unlike President’s right wing spiritual gurus who are not part of the administration, General Boykin is part of his administration. Unless the president condemns the views of General Boykin in clear and unambiguous words and gives him the boot, the general views do become the views of the president. President Bush said that the general’s remarks do not represent his views. It is less than akin to looking the other way. The General’s boss, secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, ever the slick and smooth spin-maestro who can talk for hours and say absolutely nothing, was disingenuous in his take on the case. He brushed aside General Boykin’s remarks with dismissive ‘”we are a free people”. If our memory serves us right Earl Butz, the secretary of agriculture under President Nixon, was also a free citizen but was shown the door for telling off-color racial jokes to reporters on a fight.

A few months ago I wrote a column suggesting that public posture of President Bush, his staff and his supporters has given the larger Muslim world the impression that Mr. Bush is waging a later day Crusade against the Muslims and their religion. While I still do not subscribe to that notion in its entirety, one has to wonder if General Boykin’s views are at variance with those of his bosses. Or it could be that President Bush, concerned with his reelection. is not willing to offend the Christian Right by firing General Boykin.

Whatever the reasons for President’s inaction and God (pick the One you like) only knows his motives, the president will be helped in his war against terrorism if he shows the door to the evangelist general.