Edging toward Holy War

Army Lt. General William “Jerry” Boykin publicly edged the “War on Terror” toward a Holy War in ill advised comments before an Oregon religious group. Boykin is a top Pentagon official who is in charge of tracking down al Qaeda leader Osama bin laden, and Iraqi Saddam Hussein and other targets in the Muslim world.

The fact that he would make religious statements related to official war policy while in uniform breaches tradition and may breach military ethics regulations.

He said: “…we are a Christian nation…and the enemy is a guy named Satan.” In another comment he told an audience in Florida that a Muslim Somali warlord was captured because “I knew my God was bigger than his…my God was a real god and his was an idol.”

The mixture of politics, religion and military power has always been a deadly one in history.

On the other side of the world, at a meeting of a summit of Muslim leaders, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad told the group that Jews ruled the world and Jews recruited others “to fight and die for them.” He then said that Jews invented “socialism, communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so that they can enjoy equal rights with others.”

Both comments on opposite sides of the world suggest that powerful people are unwisely moving their followers toward religious war. In my new book, I address this very issue in my new book; FLOWERS FACING THE SUN. (http://flowers.benboothe.com) It is time that the moderates of the world recognize the dangers of this and speak out.