Boykin - As Hugh Hewitt

Boykin - As Hugh Hewitt reports, NBC and the LATimes have launched a jihad against General William Boykin. Boykin, a newly-nominated lieutenant-general and Deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence for intelligence and war fighting, has apparently made explicitly Christian statements that some find divisive.

There are many issues in this story - pick-and-choose journalistic ethics and selective theology being top on my list.

There is already quite a bit of commentary about this story; Hewitt himself covers the Los Angeles Times' unusual path to break this story, while Lileks briefly touches on the rather gaping journalistic ethics problem in the LATimes story (by their intelligence specialist, former Army intel analyst William Arkin).

NBC's Lisa Myers (and the Associated Press' Matt Kelley)highlight a quote that seems to be part of the problem from some of Boykin's critics:

"Boykin's church speeches, first reported by NBC News and the Los Angeles Times, cast the war on terrorism as a religious battle between Christians and the forces of evil.

Appearing in dress uniform before a religious group in Oregon in June, Boykin said Islamic extremists hate 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."

Some critics, including Moslems, are upset. Perhaps undertandably so, to a degree:

A Muslim civil rights group on Thursday called for Boykin to be reassigned.

"Putting a man with such extremist views in a critical policy-making position sends entirely the wrong message to a Muslim world that is already skeptical about America's motives and intentions," said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

But according to Frontpage's Lowell Ponte, the general is being taken completely out of context:

Only days after this Oregon speech, for example, Boykin addressed a prayer breakfast at Fort Dix, during which, according to the base newspaper, the general “compared the radical Islamic fundamentalists to the radical ‘hooded Christians’ [apparently Ku Klux Klansmen] of the United States.

“’There are Muslims who worship here and support the United States,’ he said, pointing out that those who act violently in the name of their religion do not reflect the principles of Islam,” the base newspaper report continued.

“Nor do they reflect the principles of the Judeo-Christian roots of the United States, he said.

Another quote from Arkin and Myers which has whipped up a lot of righteous fervor:

During a January church speech in Daytona, Fla., Boykin recalled a Muslim fighter in Somalia who bragged on television the Americans would never get him because his God, Allah, would protect him: “Well, you know what I knew, that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol.”

Again, there's a context here. According to Boykin's biography (note the bio's author), Boykin was the commander of Delta Force during the 1993 Mogadishu raid.

And this introduces an understanding of comparative theology that NBC and the LATimes either missed, or found inconvenient.

Ponte notes (with my added emphasis):

It was in this context that Boykin denounced one underling of a Somali warlord as idolatrous for following a path of violence that violated the most fundamental tenants of Islam.

It would make no sense to a genuine Muslim for Boykin to proclaim his Christian God bigger – because Muslims of this region regard themselves as descendants of Abraham and worshippers of the One God of Abraham, the same God worshipped by their fellow “People of the Book,” Jews and Christians.

Boykin’s statement about his God being bigger (pushed by Leftist media critics as if it were an insult to Islam) has meaning to a Muslim only if intended to convey that this one person [Aidid, and other Wahabbists] was in fact a pagan idolater pretending to be a Muslim while violating the Koran.

So Boykin's remarks have to be strenuously divorced from their genuine context (uttered by a man with a profound understanding of the issues, both military and theological) in this war) to make them as insulting to Moslems as the media are trying to do.

So let's recap:

• A general with decades of profound understanding of the Wahabbi sect and its actions, and with immense intelligence in this area (Delta force doesn't just hire killers; you have to be highly intelligent to make it into the unit, particularly as an officer; Boykin served in the unit for 12 years, then commanded it, before commanding all US special forces!).
• Comments delivered completely deprived of the genuine intellectual context in which the general discusses the issue; damning, seven-second soundbits excised, Maureen-Dowd-style, from decades of intensely knowledgeable commentary and action on the subject
• Dubious journalistic ethics (note Lileks's commentary)

...equals the appearance of being another LATimes smear campaign against the President, of course. The media's been unable to impugn the President on the motivations for war (Yellowcakes fell flat; their "imminent threat" trope is imminently cold); and the truth about the situation in Iraq is finally starting to leak out; it may be that the Democrats' best hope left is to try to portray the Administration as extremist ideologues in the eyes of...

...Who?

This is the fascinating question, to me. The media are trying to smear one of our top officers as a simple-minded bigot, by way of impugning the president's emphasis on simple faith.

Is it because the media believe that there's a groundswell of anti-Christian backlash waiting to erupt among the electorate? Or are they as out of touch as they seemed to be during the California recall (when, according to some observers, most of the LATimes' newsroom believed Bustamante would win up until the election results actually started shaping up)?

Comments? Please. I don't have the answers here.

UPDATE: In the comments, PJZ adds:

As someone though who enthusiastically supports the War on Terror/Islamofascism I LOVE IT when our leaders (especially the guys running the campaign) speak in terms of Good versus Evil rather than the phony nuances of multicultural relativism because it shows me that THEY GET IT!

About twenty years ago, there was a really bad business-management book that was, probably accidentally, a great book on leadership; "The Patton Principles" by Porter Williamson. It explained a lot about the "warrior" frame of mind exhibited by someone like a Boykin, an old-school, "lead from the front" officer - the only type that are tolerated in Special Forces.

The book introduced me to a simple fact that Patton understood intimately - and that Boykin must, as well; when you're leading men in action - and by action, I mean "where people are shooting things at you that can rip off your limbs and leave your guts spraying out of your stomach as you watch in mute horror" - it's no time for Clintonian shadings and nuances and parsing. All things - your cause, your buddies, your enemy's turpitude - are absolute. You don't ask men to die for nuance - something Bill Clinton never understood.

And yet if you examine the context and history of the General's remarks, his absolutes are also honest (which is also an essential for a good leader); Aidid and Bin Laden do follow a sect of Islam that most of the world's Moslems find foreign if not abhorrent. And whatever the surface faith of the terrorists, they were motivated by what most Christians - even ultra-liberal anti-American ones - would have condemned, and called "evil", had the terrorists not been Moslems.

Posted by Mitch at October 17, 2003 07:08 AM