Boykin, Rumsfeld and Bush

Posted by Chris

The WaPo is not amused:

LAST FALL, DEFENSE Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ducked the embarrassing matter of grossly offensive, anti-Islamic remarks by Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin by asking the Defense Department's inspector general to examine his behavior. This was a ruse. The problem with Gen. Boykin's words was never the possibility that they violated this or that department regulation -- the sort of thing inspectors general are charged with investigating. The problem was that Gen. Boykin, deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, was delivering himself of bigoted remarks -- generally while in uniform -- that directly undercut President Bush's repeated insistence that America's war is not against Islam generally and is not a clash of religious civilizations. By unloading the matter on the inspector general, Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Bush avoided having to condemn the remarks forthrightly while seeming to take appropriate action.

Now the inspector general's office has issued its report. And as one would expect, it avoids the only important issues that Gen. Boykin's remarks raised in the first place -- that is, whether the Defense Department ought to be espousing religious bigotry and whether Mr. Rumsfeld ought to take action when a senior officer does just that. We're still waiting for Mr. Rumsfeld to answer that question.

Mr. Rumsfeld did not consider Boykin's actions to be a firing offense. Mr. Bush did not consider Mr. Rumsfeld's view that Boykin's actions were not a firing offense to be a firing offense. And so, if I have any Republican readers left, I must ask them: What do you consider to be a firing offfense?

Posted by Chris at August 23, 2004 01:13 PM