Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country Read Online Free PDF

communists, Islamists did not deny God’s existence. Far from it: they embraced God with startling fervor. Indeed, in their vitriolic denunciations of the satanic United States and in perpetrating acts of anti-American violence, radical Islamists audaciously presented themselves as God’s avenging agents. In confronting the Great Satan, they claimed to be serving God’s purposes.
    This debate over who actually represented God’s will was one that the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama studiously sought to avoid. Engagement in such a debate would implicitly suggest that a religious war was under way. Instead, U.S. officials resolutely and repeatedly insisted that the United States was not at war with Islam per se. Still, Washington’s repeated denials notwithstanding, among some considerable number of Muslims the suspicion persisted.
    Not without reason: appearing with some frequency, inflammatory events—in 2010, the hullaballoo over the “Ground Zero Mosque” in lower Manhattan; in 2011, the promotion of “International Burn a Koran Day” by the pastor of a Gainesville-based Christian church; in 2012, the circulation of an American-produced video slandering the Prophet Muhammad—reinforced such suspicions. However earnestly U.S. officials dismissed such controversies as the work of a few fanatics, reality proved more complicated—and more troubling.
    Consider the case of Lieutenant General William G. “Jerry” Boykin, an eleventh-century Christian crusader reborn as a twenty-first-century American warrior.
    While still on active duty in 2002, this highly decorated army officer spoke in uniform at a series of some thirty church gatherings during which he offered his own take on President Bush’s famous rhetorical question “Why do they hate us?” General Boykin’s perspective differed markedly from the position taken by his commander in chief: “The answer to that is because we’re a Christian nation. We are hated because we are a nation of believers.” On another such occasion, the general recalled an encounter with a Somali warlord who claimed to enjoy Allah’s protection. The warlord was deluding himself, Boykin told his coreligionists, and was sure to get his comeuppance. “I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.” As a Christian nation, the general insisted, the United States would succeed in overcoming its adversaries only if “we come against them in the name of Jesus.” 3 As far as Boykin was concerned, the war on terrorism was indeed a religious war; to pretend otherwise was foolhardy.
    When Boykin’s remarks caught the attention of the press, denunciations rained down from on high, as the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon hastened to disassociate themselves from the general’s statements. Yet subsequent indicators suggested that, however crudely, Boykin was expressing views shared by more than a few of his fellow citizens.
    One such indicator came immediately: despite the furor, the general kept his very important Pentagon job as deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, suggesting that the Bush administration considered his transgression minor. While he may have spoken out of turn, for a senior U.S. military officer to demean Islam did not evidently rise to the level of fireable offense. 4
    A second indicator came in the wake of Boykin’s eventual retirement from active duty. In 2012, the influential Family Research Council (FRC) in Washington hired him to serve as its executive vice president. Devoted to “advancing faith, family, and freedom,” the council professes an emphatically Christian outlook. The FRC is not a fringe organization. It falls well within the conservative mainstream, much as, say, the American Civil Liberties Union falls within the left-liberal mainstream. Its events routinely attract Republican Party heavyweights. In Washington circles, it wields real clout.
    Those