Zakaria on Boykin

Newsweek features Fareed Zakaria's column this week on why Donald Rumsfeld should fire Lt. Gen. Boykin ASAP.

the issue is not whether the general is free to express his views, but whether Secretary Rumsfeld wants someone who holds such views in high office. After all, were the general to have expressed his opinion that the Iraq war was a blunder, he would have been fired. Were he to have made an anti-Semitic comment (like the noxious ones Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir made last week), he would have been fired. Why? Because those freely expressed views would contradict the Bush administration’s basic philosophy. So are we to assume that Boykin’s views do not contradict administration policy? No one is urging that Secretary Rumsfeld muzzle Boykin, merely that he allow him to enter the private sector, where he may express his views even more freely. He could even sit in for Rush Limbaugh.

This is not simply a matter of symbolism, though that is important because this story is now being broadcast across the globe. The position Boykin holds—deputy undersecretary for intelligence—is one in which he would have to interact routinely with Pakistanis, Egyptians, Afghans, Indonesians; Muslims from all over the world. Will he be effective in establishing close working relationships with these officials, who have all watched him slur their religion? Is this a man who will be able to objectively sift through intelligence and analysis about the state of Muslim societies, the difference between moderates and extremists, the distinctions among various fundamentalist groups? Or does he look at them all and see ... Satan?

Zakaria is right on the money. We can hardly expect our allies in Muslim nations to be willing to work easily with a man who has made it clear that he considers "our" God to be "bigger" than "theirs" God - how can we possibly have any hope for cooperation from officials in Muslim countries that aren't quite as fond of us?

His comments about the implications of the Bush administration's lack of concern with Boykin's comments are also well made. Just as Bush's unwillingness to question his staff about who leaked Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative signals how unconcerned he is about "getting to the bottom" of the scandal, his administration's defense of Boykin and refusal (thus far) to fire him is indicative of a lack of disagreement with his statement, in spite of Bush's previous statements to the contrary.

There is one rather amusing part of the column - which is used to point out just how forced Boykin's attempted apology is. Zakaria points out, as I had mentioned in an earlier piece, that Boykin's claim that he was referring to "money and power" when said that a Somalian warlord's God was an "idol" falls flat on its face when Boykin's actual words are taken into account. (He had spoken of how the warlord has prayed to Allah for safety.) He then writes:

His dissembling gets almost comic over another one of his comments. Boykin routinely told audiences that God elevated George W. Bush to the presidency. “Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him,” he would say. “I tell you this morning that he’s in the White House because God put him there.” Boykin now explains that he believes God routinely decides American elections and has done the same thing for “Bill Clinton and other presidents.” This is surely the first time a conservative evangelical has argued that Clinton’s election was caused by divine intervention.

If that's the best explanation he can come up with, Boykin may well want to quit while he's ahead - before he has to come up with any more explanations.

Posted by thorswitch at October 20, 2003 12:58 AM | TrackBack