Ill-reasoned remarks by a senior U.S. military intelligence official led President George W…. Ill-reasoned remarks by a senior U.S. military intelligence official led President George W. Bush to attempt to soothe tempers at a meeting Wednesday on the island of Bali.

Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin, serving as a deputy undersecretary of defense, was filmed, in uniform, at various Christian functions, speaking about the war on terror and Muslims, saying they don’t worship a real god, but instead worship an idol.

In remarking on a Muslim soldier in Somalia who claimed Allah’s protection from U.S. forces, Boykin said, “I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol.” He has also portrayed the war on terror as a war on Satan, “because we’re a Christian nation.”

Bush, by way of an apology, told an assembly of Muslim clerics Wednesday that Boykin’s remarks don’t “reflect what the government thinks.”

While it’s heartening to see Bush distancing himself from one of his fellow evangelical Christians, the president stopped shamefully short of condemning Boykin outright.

Boykin’s remarks are just the kind of small-minded, pathetic bigotry that is keeping our nation firmly in the sights of fundamentalist terror groups. Not only are they incendiary and stupid, they are untrue.

America is not a Christian nation. We are a nation of diverse faiths, and we were founded on sacred freedoms, not the least of which is of religion. For such a high-ranking official as Boykin to tell the world that we are fighting terror based on religious differences is an abhorrent lie, and ought to be proclaimed as such.

The sad truth is that this dogmatist’s hateful speech is going to be picked up and broadcast throughout the Muslim world, further straining relations between them and us. Boykin is going to be the face of America to countless Muslims and others throughout the world.

We aren’t fighting a holy war. There is no American jihad. The war on terrorism is just that, an attempt to stop terror in the world. It’s not an attempt to shove Christianity down the planet’s throat – at least, that’s what the Bush administration has led us to believe.

But Bush’s failure to censure Boykin comes frighteningly close to tacit approval, and for those Americans not fighting a holy war, that is terrifying.