Everyone’s favorite well-armed evangelist, three-star General William “Jerry” Boykin, has endured about a week of high-profile controversy, but he’s not out of the woods yet. In fact, things got a lot worse for him yesterday.<\/p>\n
If you’re just joining us, Boykin, the newly-appointed deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, has been a religious right-style evangelist<\/a> while serving in the military, appearing in venues across the country to preach in uniform. He’s argued, for example, that Satan, and not Osama bin Laden, is America’s true enemy; that the United States is a “Christian nation”; that God overrode the will of the American people to give Bush the presidency; and that the Christian God is “bigger” than the Muslim God, which he described as an “idol.”<\/p>\n Yesterday, at Boykin’s “request,” the Pentagon launched a formal investigation<\/a> into Boykin’s record of extreme religious rhetoric. The Defense Department announced that Boykin asked for the investigation, but I think it’s fair to say the decision was made for him.<\/p>\n Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on the Senate floor yesterday that Boykin should be reassigned<\/a>, at least temporarily, during the investigation. “When you start trying to explain what you did say, you need time out to do a little study,” Warner said.<\/p>\n While it’s unclear if anyone at the Pentagon will take Warner’s advice, it is clear that the Pentagon’s defense strategy — wait for this to go away — wasn’t working. Since Boykin’s evangelism came to public light, it’s become the focus of intense criticism on the Hill and around the world. As the Washington Post reported today<\/a>, “The Boykin case has received wide coverage in Muslim countries and has led to angry editorials in newspapers from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan.”<\/p>\n Rather than fading away, Defense Department media briefings have been dominated by questions regarding Boykin, his future, and the administration’s opinion on his controversial comments.<\/p>\n The only detail that’s ambiguous from the media reports of the investigation is what, exactly, Boykin is being investigated for. There are a few choices, including violating limits on military personnel’s political activities, standards of ethical conduct for executive branch employees, and of course, the military’s Code of Conduct, which prohibits soldiers from making outside speeches in uniform.<\/p>\n