Unfortunately it’s always the retired brass who speak out. We rarely see an active senior officer willing to put his stars on the line to do or say what is right.
LTG Boykin failed to get a fourth star because he had no fears in putting them on the line.
LTG Boykin freely expressed his beliefs in many venues and in the face of many senior officers, congressional buttheads, senatorial blowhards and presidential dumbasses.
He and I are of the same generation of soldiers that saw the jihadi sympathizers and enablers coming into the ranks and into the political scene.
I got out of it in '91, for several reasons, Clinton on his way in for one, but also because of the attitude already being fostered in the military, re: "diversity and acceptance" bullshit.
LTG Boykin has been a professed and practicing Christian since he was at least a senior Captain, probably even longer than that.
I credit him with opening my eyes to the threat, a threat that he had been talking about for several years prior to Mogadishu, a threat that he had hoped would become a rock of the foundation of the operational guidance of Delta.
I did not know him on a personal basis, nor did he directly command me, but I was aware of him for quite a while. He spent quite a while as the Delta Ops Officer, I believe, or may have been the S-2, I don't recall exactly. He was a promotable LTC when I retired, and I believe he made full COL immediately after.
He once said that the Iranian Embassy hostage rescue op was a personal failure of his.
Even though he had no direct responsibility for it, he always felt that he had not done enough to make it succeed.
Of course, as history has shown us, the only way that op could have succeeded is for Jimmah Cottah to have come down with a fatal heart attack or something, prior to the op go. But that's another story.
One hell of a leader.
One hell of a warrior.