Archbishop of Canterbury rebukes US - as the “worst imperialist” in history?! - Middle East

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is fighting an insurgency within his Anglican Church that makes the one President Bush is fighting in Iraq seem relatively mundane. In fact, here’s a little of what I wrote in a commentary on Williams’s internecine struggle a year ago:

…the battle within the Anglican Church over the ordination of gays (and women) as bishops will eventually blow its worldwide communion asunder…. [In fact] some of the most influential dioceses in the United States and overseas – especially in Latin America and Africa where the Anglicans are competing with Catholics to win souls for Christ – have [already seceded over this issue].

Seven of its parishes – located in my home state of Virginia – defected as well. But, truth be told, what really confounded, if not upset, many Anglicans is the fact that these white Virginians abandoned their white leader, Archbishop Rowan Williams of England, to pledge allegiance to a black leader, Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria – to become a part of his rival and devoutly-homophobic worldwide communion.

Therefore, it’s understandable that Williams would be anxious to deflect criticism of his leadership of the Anglican Church by sermonizing indignant criticism of Bush’s leadership of the “war on terror”. In so doing, however, I’m afraid he may have undermined what little remained of his moral authority.

He did so in a recent interview with Muslim lifestyle magazine Emel, which The Sunday Times published yesterday. Williams insinuated that Americans are a greater threat to Western civilization than Islamic Jihadists. That’s how zealous he was in condemning the US. And, to support this antic contention, he proffered little more than this:

The Muslim practice of praying five times a day…allows the remembrance of God to be built in deeply in their daily rhythm.

Indeed, the Times exposed the oxymoronic nature of his condemnation by lamenting that Williams made “only mild criticisms of Islamic world.”

But this was not Williams’s only lapse into the ad absurdum of moral relativism. He also waxed nostalgic about British colonialism by arguing that it was salutary compared to “American imperialism,” which he decried as being predicated on:

…the assumption that a quick burst of violent action [to execute regime change] will somehow clear the decks and that you can move on and other people will put it back together — Iraq, for example.

Never mind that I and almost every black person I know who lived under British colonialism would take visceral exception to his paternalistic assessment in this regard.

The fact of the matter is that the Americans went into Iraq fully committed to the “Pottery Barn rule.” That rule states that “if you break it, you own it.” Moreover, Williams seems oblivious that the Americans remain mired in Iraq, trying desperately “to put it back together.” Further, that it’s “other people” (invariably non-Iraqis) who are exhorting them to “move on”….

Of course, it’s probably heretical of me to counter the Archbishop’s sanctimonious homily on American foreign policy with these geopolitical facts. Nevertheless, it would be remiss of me not to make one more salient observation in this respect.

Namely, if America were such a force for evil (and a pariah nation to all Muslims) – as Williams suggests, I doubt every country in the Muslim world, including Syria, would have accepted its invitation to attend a peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland this week to discuss a host of Mideast issues; most notably, the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Therefore, I urge Williams to focus his religious attention on the schism within his own church over homosexuality, which many Anglicans clearly consider a far greater threat to Western civilization than American imperialism.

And he should leave political criticism of America to those of us who have been hurling informed condemnation at Bush for years – not only for his misadventure in Iraq, but also for the blatant double-standards which govern his worldwide democracy crusade.

– Amen

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams