The Heavy Price America Will Pay for Pushing Religion on the Rest of the World

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Boykinism, in contrast, makes its impact felt abroad.  Unlike McCarthyism, it doesn’t strike fear into the hearts of incumbents on the campaign trail here.  Attracting General Boykin’s endorsement or provoking his ire probably won’t determine the outcome of any election.  Yet in its various manifestations Boykinism provides the kindling that helps sustain anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world.  It reinforces the belief among Muslims that the Global War on Terror really  is a war against them.

Boykinism confirms what many Muslims are already primed to believe: that American values and Islamic values are irreconcilable.  American presidents and secretaries of state stick to their talking points,  praising Islam as a great religious tradition and touting past U.S. military actions (ostensibly) undertaken on behalf of Muslims.  Yet with their credibility among Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, and others in the Greater Middle East about nil, they are pissing in the wind.

As long as substantial numbers of vocal Americans do not buy the ideological argument constructed to justify U.S. intervention in the Islamic world -- that  their conception of freedom (including religious freedom) is ultimately compatible with  ours -- then neither will Muslims.  In that sense, the supporters of Boykinism who reject that proposition encourage Muslims to follow suit.  This ensures, by extension, that further reliance on armed force as the preferred instrument of U. S. policy in the Islamic world will compound the errors that produced and have defined the post-9/11 era.