Posted on 10/22/2003 7:03:00 AM PDT by veronica
The latest proposed victim in our struggle against terrorism is Army Lt. General William G. "Jerry" Boykin, recently named Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. His mission is to reinvigorate the search for bin Laden, Mullah Omar and other leaders of global terrorism. By training and experience he is marvelously prepared for his new duties -- having risen from a Delta Force commando to top-secret Joint Special Operations Command, through the CIA, to command of the Army's Special Forces. For a quarter century he has been fighting terror with his bare hands, his fine mind and his faith-shaped soul. It is that last matter -- his faith, and his willingness to give politically incorrect witness to that faith in Christian churches -- that has drawn furious media and political fire in the last week. The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Howard Dean, The Egyptian Foreign Minister and other less lofty entities have all called for his removal from office because of his expressed religious views. And, of course, these calls for his head are all made on behalf of religious tolerance.
While the full text of the general's comments will not been released by the Los Angeles Times columnist who secretly recorded them during the general's witness in churches in Oklahoma, Oregon and Florida, the purportedly scandalous bits have been selectively published in print and on television. General Boykin said the terrorists come from "the principalities of darkness," that they are "demonic," and they hate us because "We're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian, and the enemy is a guy named Satan." The general also recounted the time he was chasing down a Somali warlord who was bragging that the Americans would not capture him because his god, Allah, would protect him. "Well," Boykin responded, "my God is bigger than his God. I knew my God was a real God, and his was an idol."
In short, General Boykin is being accused of calling America a Judeo-Christian country, the war on terrorism a religious war, and of expressing his belief in the truth of the New Testament of the Bible. While his critics concede that he has a right to express his religious views, they argue that his expressed opinions of the Islamic and Christian religions make him unfit to perform his duties of helping to lead in the war on terrorism. I am inclined to believe that he is splendidly fit for such combat, and I thank God that we have such a man as General Boykin in our midst.
The purported fear is that the general's comments may have ruffled the feathers of our esteemed enemy -- the millions and millions of fanatical Islamists, or that his statement may so inflame the passions of the millions of good Muslims that they will discard their peaceable ways and pick up the bloody sword of jihad. What utter balderdash. Whether or not American officials chose to call this a religious war, it is utterly clear that our enemy, bin Laden and the other terrorists, are motivated by Islamic religious fanaticism. They say so in their founding documents and every day, in every way, around the world. However peaceably we may interpret the Koran or assess the history of Islam, at this time and in these places one would have to be swayed by a spirit of detachment from the facts not to see that a sizable percentage of Muslims believe they are in a religious war with non-Muslims. They are consciously at religious war with the Jews in the Middle East, with Hindus in the subcontinent and with Christians everywhere. It shouldn't be a firing offense for the occasional American general to return the compliment. Indeed, I am heartened by General Boykin's fighting spirit.
Nor is it factually wrong or religiously insensitive to point out that the United States is a Judeo-Christian country. We are. It is an uncontestable historic and cultural fact. We are also a country that strives in both law and habit to be impeccably tolerant and respectful to all other religions and to those who believe in no religion at all. But in rallying our countrymen to the defense of our lives and property at this time of peril, we are entitled to invoke -- as Lincoln once did with such dignity and passion -- the mystic chords of our memory. And it is well to recall that when Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met in Placentia Bay off New Foundland on the heavy cruiser Augusta on August 9, 1941, to rally our nations to our common defense, they sang three songs with the assembled sailors: "O God, Our Help in Ages Past," "Eternal Father, Strong to Save" and "Onward, Christian Soldiers."
for the purpose of embarassing the general and his superiors.That columnist has a First Amendment right to report the truth.
OTOH the general has a right, also codified in the First Amendment, to be and to speak as a Christian--a persuasion which few if any of our 43 presidents have denied. Even the previous one, after all, was noted for carrying a Bible out of a church--not that journalists accused him of actually believing in it.
The general is accused of actually believing that carpenters are resurrected; the accusation is leveled by people who actually believe that journalists are objective. Of the two propostions, the latter is far and away the less likely.
Do you know if "Jerry" is the middle name, 'Gerald?' Thanks.
God bless General Boykin. Get stuffed Condi!
This should be updated to read -
You have nothing to fear but politicians.
I just received a forwarded email from a friend, from Gary Baur, Chairman of the Campaign for Working Families. It is posted below. I called the number and spoke to a gentleman, told him who I was, and said I was going to post this at FreeRepublic.com and if it would be a problem if they received a "high volume" response to this. He didn't seem to know about Free Republic (*gasp*) but that they receive a lot of email every day, and, YES, General Boykim would receive the letters of support.
So, let's hit 'em with a huge response. HUGE. Ping your friends and fellow FReepers to this posting.
Make sure you tell Boykin you heard about this at Free Republic!
__Original Email____________________________________________
Subj: End of Day --10/21/03
Date: 10/21/03 12:07:43 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: garybauer@mail.cwfpac.com
Reply-to: GARYBAUER@mail.cwfpac.com
To: Friends and Supporters of the Campaign for Working Families
From: Gary L. Bauer, Chairman
Date: Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Brace Yourself
Next month CBS will air a mini-series called "The Reagans" about the president for whom I was honored to work for eight years. Any fleeting hope that we had for the series to offer a favorable account of the Reagan years is fast disappearing. Perhaps the first sign should have been the news that Reagan will be played by James Brolin, husband of left-wing activist Barbara Streisand! But now there's more. The script written by Elizabeth Egloff includes a conversation between Nancy and the president. She wants him to do more to help AIDS victims, to which Reagan responds, "They that live in sin shall die in sin." Egloff now admits the entire exchange is a fabrication! But it neatly fits into the left-wing worldview that AIDS spread in the 1980s because conservatives in Washington didn't care!
Crucifixion
It is now official - the Washington Post is on a "crusade" to crucify General Boykin. Today, the Post filed another diatribe adding to the "indictment" of General Boykin new "damning" information regarding his view on why the September 11th attacks weren't even worse. Here is what the general said, "Whether you realize it or not, I believe there were at least two more airplanes that were headed for major installations in this country. I believe that there was one headed for the White House, there was one headed for the Capitol, but they were thwarted by the hand of God."
Well, many other intelligence experts also believe other hijackings were planned, but ultimately failed on September 11th, but that isn't what the Post is questioning. They just can't comprehend and they find intolerable that a top U.S. general believes and says there is a God who intervenes in the affairs of men! I have sent the following letter to the editor of the Washington Post.
"Seldom has the Washington Post's ignorance of people of faith, particularly Evangelicals, been more evident than in your October 18, 2003 hyperventilating editorial concerning Lt. General William G. 'Jerry' Boykin.
"The Lt. General's 'sins,' from the perspective of the militant secularist perch of your editorial writer, seems to boil down to this: Boykin sees the 'jihadist' terrorists who killed 3,000 of us September 11th and who are feverishly striving to kill more of us right now and whose 'brothers' in spirit desecrated the bodies of U.S. soldiers murdered in Mogadishu by dragging them naked through the streets, as proof of the existence of evil in the world. Indeed, the Lt. General believes he saw and felt a demonic presence in the blood soaked streets of Mogadishu.
"But the Post finds this belief by a top officer in the war on terror that there is a spiritual war raging in the world to be 'weird, and not a little scary.' As I recall, the Post didn't like it when the Commander-In-Chief identified an 'axis of evil' either. But, what is really scary is that the most influential newspaper in Washington apparently is unable to recognize the spiritual evil inherent in the self-described jihadists who are spreading death and destruction from one end of the globe to the other on a scale ranging from the individual decapitation of Daniel Pearl to mass murder in lower Manhattan.
"The last century provided plenty of proof of the existence of evil (from Stalin's Gulags to Hitler's death camps.) The fascist jihadist terrorists of today spring from the same hell."
General Boykin attends an Assembly of God church just a mile from my own church. If you want to encourage him, e-mail your messages of support to me and I will hand deliver them this weekend. Also, e-mail the White House at president@whitehouse.gov and urge the President to stand with General Boykin.
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