It all just stopped.
By then, of course, I’d had plenty of time to think about how unfair it had all seemed. I thought many times that if I could quickly exfiltrate into obscurity, I would have. Looking back over my life, there were many times when I wanted to give up. During Delta selection, when I fell into that freezing creek and lost the feeling in my feet, I really thought maybe I ought to just stop and build a fire and let them find me. After Mogadishu, my personal sense of loss and failure was so great that I considered quitting the Army. After my divorce, I just wanted to quit life altogether.
But I knew people were pulling for me, praying for me. And in those trials and others, God constantly reminded me of His presence. I had to get beyond not only my own weakness, but also my own strength and learn to rely on Him alone. It was God who sustained me through three decades of defending this country. It was God who gave me the courage to face death in order to rescue others.
It was God I had relied on when I nearly lost an arm in battle.
It was God I prayed to when my men went to war.
It was God I cried out to when they returned maimed and bleeding.
And when they didn’t return at all.
When I stood at pulpits and podiums rallying Christians to pray and encouraging non-Christians to stand strong for America, I was honest about all that. I declared the truth of this country’s Judeo-Christian heritage, a truth reflected in our founding documents and reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in 1991. I declared the truth that the jihadists want Christians and Americans dead. And I declared the truth of God’s sovereignty over man’s affairs in war and peace and even in the White House.
For that the media branded me “an intolerant extremist” and turned me into a global target.
So, yes, during my year of public humiliation, I reflected on the unfairness of it all. But then I thought about Bill Garrison, who has a homespun saying on fairness that reflects his Texas outlook on life: “If you think the world will treat you fairly because you’re a nice person, then you probably think a bull won’t charge you because you are a vegetarian.”
That really summed it up for me. And as I thought more about the way things unfolded, I saw that some of my statements, when taken out of context, could easily have been misunderstood. Still, by and large, my audiences knew exactly what I was saying: that the battle of this age, the battle sparked on 9/11, is a spiritual war, a war of good against evil, a war of Islamic jihadists against all of us.
The left can scream all it wants that the war on terror is about oil or American imperialism or George W. Bush’s personal amusement. That if we weren’t such big, bad bullies, the poor third world jihadists wouldn’t have attacked us, and the French would like us better.
But we are not the bad guys. Our motto is life and liberty. The jihadists’ motto is convert or die. And no matter how much the PC crowd would like to deny it, the inalienable right to liberty that America is fighting for is part of the Judeo-Christian heritage that is the bedrock of our nation. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, the right to liberty comes from outside us, planted in our hearts by our Creator, making it not merely an American ideal, but a human ideal.
America is a melting-pot society. We speak many languages, and respect many cultures and religions. But every man, woman, and child deserves the freedom endowed by their Creator.
That’s why America’s cause is just. That’s why we’re the good guys. And that’s why we will never surrender.
Notes
A Medal and a Body Bag
1. Col. Charlie A. Beckwith and Donald Knox, Delta Force: The Army’s Elite Counterterrorist Unit (New York: Avon, 1983), 144. (back to text)
Merry Christmas, Noriega
1. Kurt Muse and John Gilstrap, Six Minutes to Freedom (New York: Citadel Press, Kensington, 2006), 36–38. (back to text)
2. Ibid, 39. (back to text)
3. Ibid, 39. (back to text)
4. Ibid, 104. (back to text)
5. Ibid, 106. (back to text)
Drug Lords and False Prophets
1. Mark Bowden, Killing Pablo (New York: Penguin Books, 2001), 118. (back to text)
2. Ibid, 23. (back to text)
3. Ibid, 80–81. (back to text)
4. Ibid, 63. (back to text)
5. Ibid, 69. (back to text)
Crucible
1. “Journalists Rebuke Army General’s Christian Views as ‘Divisive.’ ” Media Research Center, online at http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2003/cyb20031017.asp#1. (back to text)
2. Richard T. Cooper, “General Casts War in Religious Terms,” Los Angeles Times, October 16, 2003. (back to text)
3. Ibid. (back to text)
4. William M. Arkin, “The Pentagon Unleashes a Holy Warrior,” Los Angeles Times, October 16, 2003. (back to text)
5. “Totenberg on Gen. Boykin: ‘I Hope He’s Not Long for This World.’ ” Media Research Center, online at http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2003/cyb20031020.asp#1. (back to text)
6. Ibid. (back to text)
7. Jeff Jacoby, “Hate speech of the left,” Boston Globe, December 28, 2003, online at http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/12/28/hate_speech_of_the_left/. (back to text)
8. Cynthia Tucker, “Put Boykin on inactive duty,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, October 26, 2003. (back to text)
9. Jan C. Gabrielson, “Apology didn’t diffuse the controversy,” Los Angeles Times, October 22, 2003. (back to text)
10. William M. Arkin, “The troops also need to support the American people,” washingtonpost.com, online at http://blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2007/01/the_troops_also_need_to_support.html. (back to text)
11. Ibid. (back to text)
12. Ibid. (back to text)
13. Ibid. (back to text)
14. Patrick J. Buchanan, “A Christian warrior under fire,” WorldNetDaily, October 27, 2003, online at http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp? ARTICLE_ID=35281. (back to text)
15. Bill Press, “Backward Christian Soldier,” WorldNetDaily, October 31, 2003, online at http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp? ARTICLE _ID=35362. (back to text)
16. R. Jeffrey Smith and Josh White, “General’s speeches broke rules; report says Boykin failed to obtain clearance,” Washington Post, August 19, 2004. (back to text)
17. Rowan Scarborough, “General cleared in church speeches case,” Washington Times, August 20, 2004. (back to text)
18. R. Jeffrey Smith and Josh White, “General’s speeches broke rules; report says Boykin failed to obtain clearance,” Washington Post, August 19, 2004. (back to text)
Bibliography
The authors consulted the following sources in reconstructing and ensuring the accuracy of historical events recounted in this memoir.
Books
Beckwith, Col. Charlie A., and Donald Knox. Delta Force: The Army’s Elite Counterterrorist Unit. New York: Avon Books, 1986.
Bowden, Mark. Black Hawk Down. New York: Penguin, 1999, 2000.
Bowden, Mark. Guests of the Ayatollah. New York: Grove Press, 2006.
Bowden, Mark. Killing Pablo. New York: Penguin, 2001.
Carney, Jr., Col. John T., and Benjamin F. Schemmer. No Room for Error: The Covert Operations of America’s Special Tactics Units from Iran to Afghanistan. New York: Ballantine Books, 2002.
Landau, Alan M. and Frieda W.; Terry Griswold and D.M. Giangreco; and Hans Halberstadt. U.S. Special Forces: Airborne Rangers, Delta, & U.S. Navy Seals. Osceola, WI: MBI Publishing, 1999.
Muse Kurt, and John Gilstrap. Six Minutes to Freedom. New York: Citadel Press; Kensington, 2006.
Web Sites
Accounts of Special Operation at Panama and Grenada were researched at http://www.specialoperations.com.
The transcript of the NBC News broadcast on pp. 13–14 and 315–316, and the Nina Totenberg interview on page 324 were retrieved from the Media Research Center at www.mediaresearch.org.
The account of the Battle of
Ia Drang Valley on page 33 is online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ia_Drang.
The war crimes of Goran Jelisic recounted on page 297 are documented in “Jelisic Case: Summary of the Judgment” by International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), online at http://www.un.org/icty/brcko/judgement/jel-tresj9912e.htm. Jelisic was sentenced to forty years in prison for his crimes.
About the Authors
LTG (Ret.) William G. “Jerry” Boykin spent over 36 years in the U.S. Army. He served most of that time in Special Operations; including the Delta Force, Rangers, and Special Forces. He also served a tour at the Central Intelligence Agency and retired in June 2007 after serving his last four years in uniform as Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.
Lynn Vincent, coauthor of New York Times bestseller, Same Kind of Different as Me, is a U.S. Navy veteran and features editor at WORLD Magazine where she covers news, politics and current events. She lives in San Diego, California, with her husband and their two children.
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