...but I'd strongly disagree with his interpretation of the Divine Plan.
If you believe, as I sometimes do, that God takes an active, guiding role in human history (atheists need read no further), it is easy to account for the sudden emergence of nobodies like a Joan of Arc (a female peasant), a Lincoln (a minor politician), or a Churchill (whose star was distinctly on the wane) during a time of crisis. God raises these extraordinary people up and clears the path for them until the job is done. If this much is true, it follows that something so historically earth-shaking and terrible as the rise and temporary triumph of a Hitler (who also enjoyed a curiously "charmed" career until he had served his purpose) must also, somehow, be an integral component of the plan; at any rate, such a man would not be permitted to prosper if God chose to disallow it (unless you take the view that Satan or the Demiurge or whoever has the power to put his own pieces into play on the cosmic chessboard).
The idea that God is only ever going to do things that are perfectly happy and beneficial for all involved is, I believe, in error. God Himself admits as much in the Old Testament when he allows Jerusalem to be destroyed and the Jews to be carried off to slavery in Babylon. He does it to teach them a lesson which they evidently weren't going to learn any other way. Many people who went through the blood and horror of the American Civil War strongly believed that it was punishment from God for the sin of slavery, the sin of the Mexican War, or both. To tread on very sensitive ground, I've heard it argued that one of the reasons the Holocaust was permitted to occur was to create the conditions under which the state of Israel could be established. One may argue whether such episodes' ultimate benefits to mankind are worth the human misery required to bring them about, but that's a whole different topic.
A happier spin on this is provided by Thomas Paine:
"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated." The American Crisis I
I'm still conflicted as to whether the current right wing stranglehold on American life and policy represents a temporary aberration that has just about run its course or a darkening twilight that will deepen to an enduring night of fascism. If the latter, given the ideological fervor of the people in charge and the might of the machine they'll be able to operate in pursuit of their ends, given the repercussions that even now their reckless gambling with the nation's finances and their meddling in the Islamic tinderbox have set rippling into generations yet to come, it may well be that we are living in one of those times when the Unseen Hand is manipulating human history to perfect its own inscrutable design. So in this the general is correct. But historical precedents suggest that that design is something no one now is able to foresee; and liars, thugs, haters, and hypocrites have always been among the most fervent to believe that God is on their side, when in reality their self-proclaimed crusade is frequently a tool which He uses and then discards when it has served its purpose.
To say that God allows evil and hatred to prosper for a time is not to say that He looks kindly on the men and the cause which prosper. The Ancien Régime, Napoleon, the Southern slaveholders, the Russian Tsars, Hitler, and the Soviets were all allowed to work their evil in the world for their varying lengths of time, but when the limit had been reached (whether you ascribe this to the will of God or to the collapse of social, cultural, or political supports that just weren't going to stand it any more) they all went down to ruin. There is a famous comment by a Confederate official in which he contrasts the South's exultant feeling of invincibility and divine protection in May 1863 to the shock, horror and despair that befell them two months later when Lee's army had been wrecked at Gettysburg and Vicksburg had been taken, and both on the Fourth of July. Antony Beevor in The Fall of Berlin 1945 powerfully describes the various reactions of German civilians, soldiers, and politicians when the Russian armies came pouring into the Reich. There was very little screaming for the Führer in those days.
Their eyes were opened then. General Boykin and all his ilk may yet live to see their eyes opened too. I share the feeling of many on these boards that the next few years will be critical in this regard, and that if the American right wing is not checked soon it will only become more brutal, irresponsible, and destructive in its use of power; and that the longer its reign, the more terrible will be its inevitable downfall and the greater the number of innocent people who will be buried in its ruin. But I won't give up hope. There may yet be a new Washington or Lincoln waiting in the wings. If so, it's probably someone no one has heard of yet.
Françoise (sorry this post is so long)
P.S. Here's a much more eloquent expression of this idea than I could ever give:
"Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Both read the same bible and pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces but let us judge not that we not be judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. The prayers of neither have been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offenses for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.'
"If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offenses which in the providence of God must needs come, but having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope - fervently do we pray - that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn by another with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altoghether.'" -- Abraham Lincoln, 2nd Inaugural Address