Holy Warrior

The Los Angeles Times and NBC News are reporting that a high-ranking U.S. military official assigned to track down Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and other targets, has made highly controversial and inflammatory statements pertaining to the war on terror.

Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin, the new deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence, has made speeches before church groups characterizing the war against terrorism as a clash between Judeo-Christian values and Satan.

Boykin is a 13 year veteran of the top secret Delta Force, a covert operations unit of the U.S. Army, who has played a role in the 1993 assault on Somalia’s Muslim warlords, the hunt for Colombian drug czar Pablo Escobar and the failed attempt to rescue American hostages from Iran in 1980. The General is also an outspoken evangelical Christian.

The LA Times reports that in June, speaking before a religious group in Oregon, Boykin claimed Islamic extremists hated the United States "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian ... and the enemy is a guy named Satan."

The article goes on to say... ‘Discussing the battle against a Muslim warlord in Somalia, Boykin told another audience, "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol."

Boykin even went so far as to allude that President Bush’s administration was divinely inspired. "He's in the White House because God put him there," Boykin is reported to have said to a group in Sandy, Oregon.

Right-wing religious extremism has now officially run amok in Washington. We have always known that such sentiments were a part of the underlying purpose for being in this administration. Right after 9/11, Bush himself said he wanted to lead a “crusade” on terror, before retracting those remarks. But for them to be so publicly brazen now smacks of an arrogance and air of invincibility that we can only hope will be their undoing in next year’s presidential election.

Quite predictably, the Defense Department from Donald Rumsfeld on down, is trying to distance itself from Boykin’s comments. Boykin himself has made no public statement. But the damage has already been done. At a time when Middle Eastern impressions of the U.S. are at an all-time low, views such as these, whether made public or not, harken back to the dark ages in more ways than one.

Posted by Bernie at October 16, 2003 11:08 PM | TrackBack