[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 16 (Wednesday, February 1, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H368-H370]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


             HONORING LIEUTENANT GENERAL WILLIAM G. BOYKIN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Turner of New York). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Gohmert) is recognized for 30 minutes.


                                 Energy

  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it's an honor to be here before you 
tonight. There's so much going on in this country, so many threats to 
our national security, and energy is one of them.
  I am so proud to be a Member of Congress with the freshmen that I 
have heard here tonight. They make the rest of us look good, and I'm so 
grateful for their discussion about energy.
  It doesn't make any sense to have more energy overall than any 
country in the world and then to pay billions, and hundreds of billions 
of dollars, to people, many who don't like us. They want to bring down 
this Nation, and yet we're enriching them, actually engorging them on 
our money.
  And then we have a solution. One little part of this solution is the 
Keystone pipeline, more oil coming from our friends in Canada, who 
actually are friends. They don't want to see this country taken down. 
They don't want to see this country attacked again like it was on 9/11. 
Then we had a hearing today on energy in our Natural Resources 
Committee, and we're trying, we were trying to pass legislation out of 
committee that would allow us to provide more of our own energy.
  But the wrong-headed approach of this administration and some people 
on the other side of the aisle that is forcing us to pay billions of 
dollars to companies that have no good plan for producing energy, but a 
great plan for bilking, sucking the money out of this administration, 
ready to throw it on any whim that they can say somehow is a green job. 
Well, it seems to be more brown in color from where I come from.
  But anyway we voted today in Natural Resources to once again allow 
drilling in this tiny area out of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge 
in Alaska. I know that there are some people, even from this body, who 
have been taken up by so-called environmental groups and taken to areas 
of ANWR that are beautiful and are certainly worth keeping pristine, 
not taken within 100 miles of the little area that we passed today to 
allow drilling in.
  It's a tiny part of the area that Jimmy Carter as President set aside 
back in the 1970s to allow drilling because there's nothing there. 
There's not a tree, a bush, anything that's living in that area in the 
way of wildlife. They can't stay because there's nothing to sustain 
them. They have to go out of there and go to the pristine areas. That's 
why Jimmy Carter set it aside as someplace we could drill.
  Yet the wrong-headed approach of this administration is to continue 
to put off limits our own natural resources. But that's only one aspect 
of things that are going wrong in this country with this 
administration.


                  Lieutenant General William G. Boykin

  So tonight I want to pay tribute to a great American hero who has 
been demeaned, a man who has spent most of his life as an American hero 
fighting for Americans to have freedom of speech, and yet being 
condemned and disallowed the opportunity to have the freedom of speech 
he repeatedly, over and over, laid down his life or was willing to lay 
down his life to provide for the rest of us, that is Lieutenant General 
William G. Boykin, retired.
  He's a former commander of the United States Army, Special Forces. He 
was a founding member of the Delta Force. He's also known for his 
devotion to the Christian faith, which at one time in this country, in 
fact, for 99.9 percent of this country's history, it was considered a 
good thing to be a person of faith and devoted particularly to a 
Christian faith.
  Jerry Boykin, Lieutenant General Boykin, graduated from Virginia Tech 
in 1971 and received his Army commission. By 1980, he was the Delta 
Force operations officer on the April 24-25 Iranian hostage rescue 
attempt.
  Now, I talked to General Boykin about that before and consider him to 
be a friend. Something that I had heard back during my days in the 
service was something that General Boykin said was above his grade back 
then, 1979-1980. It would be interesting to hear someone from the 
Carter administration actually provide documentation of the actual 
decision to reduce the number of helicopters that would be utilized to 
go into Iran to a staging area hundreds of miles inside Iran, meet up 
with C-130s--other equipment, rather, that was there in the staging 
area, and then from there stage the rescue effort that would go into 
Tehran and get our hostages.

                              {time}  2120

  The story I would love to see documentation on, the thing that I 
heard as a member of the U.S. Army years ago, was that the original 
plan had at least 12 helicopters that were going to be utilized to go 
into the staging area, but the Carter administration believed that it 
might look too much like an invasion. So the word was back then that we 
heard, the Carter administration ordered the 12 helicopters reduced to 
eight so it wouldn't look like an invasion, and that there were those 
who were engaged in the planning who said, you know what, we need 12 
because the mission must have six helicopters to go forward from the 
staging area. These turbine engines will cross hundreds of miles of 
sand, and we have to count on perhaps a 50 percent loss of helicopters 
coming to the staging area. Since we know we need six, we want to start 
out with 12 so we have a better chance of getting six to the staging 
area.
  We knew where the hostages were, and yet people in the 
administration, ultimate responsibility resting with the President, 
decided let's take more of a chance with the people we are putting at 
risk, sending in as the Delta Force. Let's put them even more at risk 
making them go in with fewer helicopters.
  And as though Delta Force at the time knew, all they knew apparently 
was they get to the staging area, if they don't have six helicopters, 
then the mission will be aborted, and they'll have to turn around and 
go back. And since they were ordered to come in with eight instead of 
12 or more, they got to the staging area with five. These American 
heroes who were not given adequate resources to go in and rescue our 
hostages in Iran by an administration you would have thought understood 
and appreciated the military, but apparently did not adequately. Even 
though President Carter had been in the military, you would have 
thought he understood. They get to the staging area, there are five 
helicopters, and the mission is aborted.
  One explanation was when one helicopter pilot was trying to lift off, 
once they knew it was aborted, everyone was anxious to get out. A 
helicopter started up. Obviously, the sand swirls and it's easy to get 
vertigo and lose sense of direction, and the helicopter went sideways, 
cut into a C-130, and we left heroic Americans on the desert floor in 
Iran, a terrible embarrassment. And to this former soldier, I didn't 
think it was an embarrassment to the Delta Force that was sent in. They 
were ready to fight and die, but their orders were to go in. They were 
sent in without adequate helicopters; and when the mission did not go 
forward, people lost their lives.
  But as we know from the old poem:
  Theirs was not to reason why
  Theirs was but to do and die.
  Some of them did.
  I would have hoped over the years the lesson learned from Vietnam 
would have been not that that was not a winnable war, as our colleague 
here, Sam Johnson, could tell. After 2 weeks of carpet bombing after 
North Vietnam had left the negotiation table, 2 weeks of carpet 
bombing, they came back. And as the Hanoi Hilton prisoners were taken 
away, Sam said the meanest, one of the meanest officers, at the Hanoi 
Hilton was laughing and said: You stupid Americans. If you'd bombed us 
for one more week, we would have had to surrender unconditionally.
  Instead of being done in the seventies, that could have been done 
early in the sixties. The lesson of Vietnam should have been we don't 
send our military, men and women, anywhere in the world on our behalf 
unless we give them the equipment to do the job, unless we give them 
the order to go win whatever it costs. Win and come home. That should 
have been the lesson, but it wasn't learned in Vietnam.
  And it apparently wasn't learned during the failed rescue attempt 
under the Carter administration. But these were

[[Page H369]]

American heroes who put their lives at risk for an administration that 
didn't fully appreciate what was involved.
  General Boykin, in February 2003, had two stars as an Army general. 
He was commander of the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort 
Bragg and was about to interview with Secretary Rumsfeld for his third 
star nomination.
  He had received two Purple Hearts: one for Grenada in 1983, the other 
for Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993. He was involved as a commander in the 
Black Hawk Down scenario.
  From 1978 to 1993, General Boykin was assigned in various capacities 
to Delta Force. With Delta Force, he oversaw the rescue of CIA 
operative Kurt Muse from a Panamanian prison and the capture also of 
Manuel Noriega, the brutal dictator who put Kurt Muse in that prison.
  In Colombia, our hero, Jerry Boykin, helped hunt down the drug lord 
Pablo Escobar. He also hunted war criminals in Bosnia. He helped rescue 
hostage missionaries in Sudan. He tracked kidnappers in El Salvador. He 
spent 13 years with Delta Force. And as I mentioned before, he was not 
only a founding member of Delta Force but also was later its commanding 
officer.
  In October of 1983, Major Boykin worked as an operations officer 
during Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada. During a dawn assault to free 
some Grenada government officials held by the Marxist People's 
Revolutionary Army, Boykin was shot in the arm with a .50 caliber 
round, splitting the bone completely in two. He was told he would never 
use it again, but almost miraculously his arm healed, which Boykin 
again believed was a God thing.
  In October 1993, Colonel Boykin was in command of the Delta Force 
tracking down militia leader Mohamed Farrah Aidid in Somalia, during 
which time the infamous battle of Mogadishu took place. Some might 
recognize that as the Black Hawk Down scenario. That was the event.
  But April 1998 to February of 2000, Jerry Boykin served as the 
commanding general of the U.S. Army Special Forces Command Airborne at 
Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
  From March 2000 to 2003, he was the commanding general, United States 
Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center, Fort Bragg, North 
Carolina.
  In June of 2003, General Boykin was appointed deputy Under Secretary 
of Defense for Intelligence under Dr. Stephen Cambone, Under Secretary 
of Defense for Intelligence.

                              {time}  2130

  Lieutenant Boykin retired on August 1, 2007 and currently teaches at 
Hampden-Sydney College. General Boykin is the author of ``Never 
Surrender: A Soldier's Journey to the Crossroads of Faith and Freedom'' 
and also ``Danger Close: A Novel'' as well as ``Kiloton Threat,'' a 
novel.
  General Boykin attended the United States Armed Forces Staff College, 
Army War College, Shippensburg University where he received a master's 
degree. His badges include the Master Parachutist Badge, Military 
Freefall Badge, Ranger Tab, Special Forces Tabs. Medals include the 
Distinguished Service Medal, the Defense Superior Service Medal with 
three oak leaf clusters, and the Legion of Merit with an oak leaf 
cluster. This is a real hero. He also received the Bronze Star, Air 
Medal, Purple Heart with an oak leaf cluster.
  This is an American hero, ready repeatedly to lay down his life for 
our right to free speech, to the freedoms we know and love; and yet he 
was not so well treated. People thought it was inappropriate that a 
general would say, basically, the same things that Franklin Roosevelt 
did, things like Franklin Roosevelt said in his prayer on D-Day as he 
prayed on the radio, national radio broadcast.
  And during that radio broadcast, Franklin Roosevelt prayed for our 
troops against those forces of evil. I believe he used the word 
``crusade'' in there. And yet Franklin Roosevelt was never excoriated 
or crucified for the language he used in the prayer because people knew 
he cared about our troops. People knew that he cared about Americans 
having freedom. So they never went after Franklin Roosevelt the way 
they have come after Jerry Boykin.
  General Boykin was invited to speak at West Point this year. My 
understanding is he was going to be speaking to West Point cadets at 
our U.S. military academy, cadets who were Christians, about how a 
Christian in the service of the United States reconciles his faith, his 
commitment to God, and his commitment to country. I would imagine most 
of us who are Christians who served in the United States military had 
those inner questions. Some of us found answers in Scripture, found 
answers in wise counsel, and found a peace afforded through prayer.
  Wise counsel is what I get anytime I talk to General Boykin. This 
incredible man, this American hero, who should be an American icon, was 
told he really should withdraw his acceptance of the invitation to come 
and speak because West Point, our U.S. military academy--not the 
military--but the people that this administration put in place, were 
too embarrassed to have this American hero come speak to Christian 
cadets at the United States military academy where we also have a 
politically correct czar who monitors such things and makes sure we 
don't offend the people who want to kill us and destroy our way of 
life.
  So pressure was put, gee, the military academy, those in power 
allowed to be there by this administration, with the political 
correctness in full display, didn't want to withdraw the invitation. 
They thought it would be better if he backed out of coming. This 
American hero will do anything his Nation needs him to do, and he did 
something that I'm not sure I would have done. He said, sure, you don't 
want me to come, I withdraw my acceptance, I won't come. He canceled.
  This American hero who has repeatedly put himself between America and 
harm is not afforded freedom of speech. United States military academy 
cadets, because of this administration's approach, surely must feel 
that, gee, it's not a good thing to be a Christian in America if you're 
going to really live your faith. It's not appropriate to wrestle with 
religious issues unless, of course, you're a Muslim like Major Hasan, 
because if you want to speak freely, in Major Hasan's case, of course, 
and the private who was ready to kill people in the service with him as 
Major Hasan did, this military with this administration's overblown 
political correctness would not even deal with the private who did the 
same kind of interview as Major Hasan, that's made the same kind of 
statement that Major Hasan did.
  He was on the Internet basically saying if they make me deploy, I'll 
have to kill troops to avoid having to go face Muslims and possibly 
kill Muslims for one of the reasons that we're not allowed to kill 
other Muslims. I'll have to kill Americans.
  What's wrong with this picture? It certainly wasn't a problem for the 
greatest American general, the greatest American leader in the history 
of the world, a general named George Washington. He believed so 
fervently in the same things that Jerry Boykin believed in. At one 
point, he issued an order that you couldn't take God's name in vain. 
His approach was, how can we ask God for blessings and protection with 
the same mouth that is taking His name in vain? I can assure you when I 
was in the Army, that was not a standing order.
  George Washington is the only person in the history of the world--
just down the Hall he is depicted in a painting resigning. He did the 
unthinkable. King George couldn't believe it. He led a military in a 
revolution, won the revolution as head of the military, tendered his 
resignation, gave back all the power and went home.
  Recently, I stopped for refueling in the Maldives Islands. One of the 
leaders during a luncheon, we were talking, said, we have to constantly 
worry about the possibility of a military coup. This man on the other 
side of the world said, see, because we never had a George Washington 
who set the proper pattern here.
  George Washington was a man of faith. Anyone who doubts that can read 
Peter Lillback's book ``George Washington's Sacred Fire.'' Well, 
there's an article yesterday, from Todd Starnes:

       The U.S. Military Academy pressured a retired U.S. 
     lieutenant general to withdraw from speaking at a West Point 
     prayer breakfast after Muslims and atheists complained, Fox 
     News has learned. Retired Lieutenant General William Boykin 
     was scheduled to deliver a speech at West Point on February 
     8,

[[Page H370]]

     but late Monday the military academy released a statement 
     saying he had decided to withdraw from speaking and would be 
     replaced by another speaker. However, a source close to the 
     controversy told Fox News & Commentary that Boykin was 
     pressured to withdraw. ``It was very clear they wanted 
     General Boykin to withdraw,'' said the source who asked not 
     to be identified.

                              {time}  2140

  And after you see what they've done to an American icon like General 
Boykin, you certainly understand why.
       ``He asked them to rescind the invitation, but they were 
     reluctant to do that. So he said he would take them off the 
     hook.
       Theresa Brinkerhoff, a spokesperson for West Point, told 
     Fox News & Commentary that the U.S. Military Academy ``did 
     not decide this for him.''

  Nothing is worse than political correctness and mistreatment of 
military heroes than dishonesty in doing so.

       ``After a conversation with our chaplain, Lieutenant 
     General Boykin decided to withdraw,'' Brinkerhoff wrote in an 
     email.
       Boykin, a former senior military intelligence officer, had 
     been criticized for speeches he made at evangelical Christian 
     churches where he said that America's enemy is Satan, that 
     God had put President Bush in the White House, and that a 
     Muslim Somali warlord was an idol worshiper.

  That was enough to decide to try to destroy an American hero.
  Army Times has an article, ``Retired 3-Star's West Point Invite Draws 
Protest,'' all about the controversy. New York Times, ``General 
Withdraws from West Point Talk.''
  The message is coming loud and clear to our military: If you're a 
Christian, if you're a person of faith, as demonstrated through George 
Washington's life and times, you better keep your mouth shut or this 
administration and those who are in charge of political correctness 
will see to it that you regret being so.
  There's another article by Rebecca Leung, ``The Holy Warrior,'' it's 
entitled, another interesting article. This goes right along with this 
administration's zeal to avoid recognizing the enemy against us.
  I, along with Dana Rohrabacher, Steve King, Loretta Sanchez, we met 
with Northern Alliance leaders, including General Dostum, the hero in 
fighting the Taliban. Now, these are Muslims. Some try to paint us as 
xenophobes, Islamophobes.
  Isn't it interesting, that term came as a strategy to try to scare 
off, embarrass, humiliate people who stood up for what was right 
against Muslim terrorists who want to destroy us, trying to intimidate 
us into not using the word ``Muslim.'' For heaven's sake, we know. 
They're our Muslim friends. The Northern Alliance, they're our allies. 
They're Muslims. We talked about it. We met with some Baluks from 
southern Pakistan, their leaders there. They're Muslim. They're our 
friends. They don't want to destroy us. They want to support us, and 
some of us want to support them.
  And yet this administration has such a wrongheaded approach to those 
who want to destroy our way of life. It can best be illustrated in this 
chart illustrating political correctness run amok.
  The 9/11 Commission report was prepared in a bipartisan fashion 
before people knew that the Organization of Islamic States, the Islamic 
Society of North America, CAIR would make such attacks on those who 
dare to point out that even though it's not the mass Muslim population 
who are our enemy, there are those small groups within the Muslim 
community who want to destroy our way of life. How can you understand 
and anticipate your enemy's actions, the enemy that has sworn to 
destroy you, unless you study what they believe and you understand what 
their approach is and you understand that people like Ahmadinejad--I'm 
running out of time.
  Well, let me conclude by just pointing to this chart. In the 
commission report, 322 times Islam is mentioned; jihad is mentioned 126 
times. And now it is inappropriate, under this administration, to 
mention jihad. It's inappropriate for our Justice, Intelligence, State 
to talk about jihad. It doesn't mention al Qaeda. It doesn't mention 
Hezbollah, Hamas, sharia.
  This administration has run aground, and they have brought their ship 
right on top of real American heroes.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________