PrintNovember 25, 2007
Archbishop of Canterbury calls US 'Worst" Imperialist
Methinks the High Churchman needs a remedial history lesson:
THE Archbishop of Canterbury has said that the United States wields its power in a way that is worse than Britain during its imperial heyday.Jules Crittendon puts the Archbishop in his rightful place - wearing a dunce cap in the corner of the schoolroom:
Rowan Williams claimed that America’s attempt to intervene overseas by “clearing the decks” with a “quick burst of violent action” had led to “the worst of all worlds”.
In a wide-ranging interview with a British Muslim magazine, the Anglican leader linked criticism of the United States to one of his most pessimistic declarations about the state of western civilisation. He said the crisis was caused not just by America’s actions but also by its misguided sense of its own mission.
He poured scorn on the “chosen nation myth of America, meaning that what happens in America is very much at the heart of God’s purpose for humanity”. Williams went beyond his previous critique of the conduct of the war on terror, saying the United States had lost the moral high ground since September 11. He 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”.
Sounds like the A of C doesn’t know his history, or his American or imperial British nation myths for that matter. I have two words for him. Afghanistan and Iraq. OK, three. India. Make that four. Partition. No, five. South Africa. Oh yeah, and America. Don’t forget Britain’s disastrous imperialistic mishandling of its American colonies. I’ll give him one point, though. The suppression of the Indian Mutiny of 1857 sure got the job done. For a while. May want to throw in World Wars I and II. Who let those Krauts get out of hand, anyway?What the Brits did in Africa, India, and Southwest Asia curdles the blood. It's no accident that those areas are still mired in the 19th century economically, socially, and politically. It was by design to hold back native populations so that the Brits could exploit their resources and people for all they were worth. They deliberately kept the people in ignorance by discouraging literacy. Most modern day problems - terrorism extreme poverty, economic backwardness - can all be laid at the feet in one way or another of our British "betters."
Ignoramus.
And then the Archbishop has the stupidity to make this statement:
He went on to suggest that the West was fundamentally adrift: “Our modern western definition of humanity is clearly not working very well. There is something about western modernity which really does eat away at the soul.”What eats away at the soul is the kind of moral and historical relativism practiced by naive western leaders like Williams.
