Word: boykins
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Bush's moral outrage at both Mahathir and Boykin has been oddly muted. He claims to have told Mahathir that saying Jews succeed at the expense of Muslims is "wrong and divisive." Mahathir claims that Bush only apologized in private for having to criticize him in public, "unless my hearing is very bad." Which, he tartly added, it isn't. About Boykin, Bush said that the general's remarks "didn't reflect my opinion." The Pentagon has begun an official investigation into Boykin's remarks. What there is to investigate is a puzzle...
Everyone who gets caught in one of these ethno-controversies privately believes that he or she is being punished for having had the guts to tell a harsh truth. Any apology he or she coughs up, as Boykin did, only reinforces this feeling. No doubt even Mahathir has friends and sycophants who are telling him, "Mo, you're just a victim of political correctness. What is this world coming to when a simple Prime Minister can't say the Jews control everything without people making a ridiculous fuss...
Bush ought to be furious at Boykin, because, until now, greater understanding and embrace of Islam have been real achievements of the Bush Administration. Even as America's victory in the Iraq war turns to ash, Bush can take pride that Americans have a greater appreciation that Muslims and their religion add to the richness of our great ethnic stew. And without Bush's special emphasis, the opposite might easily have happened...
...same time, Bush has described the war on terror from the beginning in Manichaean terms not all that different from Boykin's. "Today, our nation saw evil," he said on Sept. 11, 2001. "Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them," he told the nation nine days later. Boykin may be understandably perplexed about what line he crossed by referring to evil as "a guy called Satan...
...devout believer, Boykin may also wonder why it is impermissible to say that the God you believe in is superior to the God you don't believe in. I wonder this same thing as a nonbeliever: Doesn't one religion's gospel logically preclude the others'? (Except, of course, where they overlap with universal precepts, such as not murdering people, that even we nonbelievers can wrap our heads around.) Although Boykin's version of Christianity seems less like monotheism than the star of a high school polytheism tournament, his basic point is that Christianity is right and Islam is wrong...