[Dialogue] Archbishop's Assault On US Foreign Policy

[Harry Wainwright]

Published on Sunday, November 25, 2007 by The Telegraph/UK
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Archbishop's Assault On US Foreign Policy

by Auslan Cramb

The Archbishop of Canterbury has launched a stinging attack on the United
States, comparing it unfavourably with the British Empire at its peak.
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Dr Rowan Williams criticised America for intervening overseas with a "quick
burst of violent action" and claimed its foreign policy had created the
"worst of all worlds".

The wide-ranging interview with a British Muslim lifestyle magazine included
the Anglican leader's most outspoken criticisms to date of the US and the
war in Iraq.

He also said that the modern Western definition of humanity was not working,
and that there was something about Western modernity that "really does eat
away at the soul".

Dr Williams said the crisis in Iraq was caused by America's misguided sense
of its mission in the world and ridiculed the "chosen nation" myth in
America and the idea that what happened there was God's purpose.

He claimed the US had lost the moral high ground since the September 11
attacks, and urged it to launch a "generous and intelligent programme of aid
directed to the societies that have been ravaged; a check on the economic
exploitation of defeated territories; a demilitarisation of their presence".

He added: "We have only one global hegemonic power. It is not accumulating
territory: it is trying to accumulate influence and control. That's not
working.

"It is one thing to take over a territory and then pour energy and resources
in to administering it and normalising it. Rightly or wrongly, that's what
the British Empire did in India, for example.

"It is another thing to go in on the assumption that a quick burst of
violent action will somehow clear the decks and that you can move on and
other people will put it back together - Iraq, for example."

He described violence as "a quick discharge of frustration", adding: " It
serves you. It does not serve the situation. Whenever people turn to
violence what they do is temporarily release themselves from some sort of
problem but they help no one else.

"A lot of pressure around the invasion of Iraq was 'we've got to do
something, then we'll feel better'. That's very dangerous."

Dr Williams said he believed he had a role to play in the political arena in
the UK by keeping before government "the great question of how you can
actually contribute to a responsible civil society in a context where you've
undermined most of the foundations on which that society can be built".

He offered only mild criticisms of Islam in the magazine Emel, describing
the political solutions offered by the Muslim world as "not the most
impressive".

He also said he was surprised that the small Christian community in Pakistan
was seen as "deeply threatening by an overwhelming Muslim majority", and he
condemned the Israeli security wall that cuts Bethlehem in two.

However, he also commended the Muslim practice of praying five times a day,
saying that it allowed the remembrance of God to be "built deeply in their
daily rhythm".

The Archbishop has been a persistent critic of the war in Iraq and said last
month that the conflict had wreaked "terrible damage" on the Middle East.

C 2007 The Telegraph

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org 

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/25/5429/

 

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