Anglican Leader Blasts US Over Iraq By THOMAS WAGNER – 16 hours ago
LONDON (AP) — Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, criticized the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in an interview published Sunday, saying it was worse than the British land grabs of the colonial era.
The spiritual leader of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion described the situation in Iraq as the "the worst of all worlds," and compared it to the time when Britain was at the height of its imperial power.
"It is one thing to take over a territory and even pour energy and resources into administrating it and normalizing it," said Williams. "Rightly or wrongly, that's what the British Empire did — in India for example."
"It's 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 back together — Iraq, for example," he told the Muslim lifestyle magazine Emel.
"We have only one global hegemonic power at the moment," Williams said. "It is not accumulating territory; it is trying to accumulate influence and control. That's not working."
A long-standing critic of the Iraq war, Williams has said the U.S. lost the widespread moral support it enjoyed worldwide in the wake of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001.
Last year, around Christmas, Williams wrote a scathing commentary in The London Times saying the U.S.-led coalition's "shortsightedness and ignorance" in Iraq endangered the lives of Christians across the Middle East.