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Archbishop to USA: You're the Worst
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, isn’t too impressed with the United States. Impugning the notion that the U.S. is a "chosen nation," Williams said that the U.S. is a worse imperial power than Britain. The Archbishop insisted that while America eschews territorial acquisitions, the cornerstone of British imperialism, America drives after "influence and control." Calling on the U.S. to demilitarize its presence in the world, Williams offered up Britain’s management of colonial India as a better example of imperial administration, arguing that Britain "pour[ed] energy and resources into administering it and normalising it." Describing Iraq, the Archbishop attacked what he sees as the American imperial modus operandi: "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." Williams’ remarks were part of an interview he gave to Emel, a U.K. Muslim lifestyle magazine.
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An odd idea of quickly moving on by Anonymous
The Archbishop has an odd idea of what it means to quickly move on. The only time the US has done that recently was in Vietnam, and indeed the results were tragic. In cases where the US has stayed the course the results have been dramatically different.
Compare and contrast the lives of people in North Korea with those in the South, from where the US has not gotten around to moving on for the last several decades. I doubt that even the Archbishop believes that the South Koreans would be better off if the US hadn’t intervened. A similar pattern show up in post-WW2 Germany: the wall was in place to keep the East Germans from flooding to the West, where again the US was providing decades of military support. Oddly, there didn’t seem to be many people who felt a desire to move from West to East Germany, even though this would have saved them the brutal ravages of US imperialism.
My main hope for the people if Iraq is that the US once again stays the course, and the long suffering Iraqi people end up with a country more like West Germany or South Korea than like Vietnam.