Archbishop Takes Fire at American Globalists

Rowan Williams is the Archbishop of Canterbury, and in an interview with a British magazine he lashed out at the imperialists that are the U.S. government, mainly the neocons, by comparing them to the British empire in India. He takes to heart particularly the fact that members of this administration still believe that America is the "chosen nation" in that they want people to think they know what is best for the rest of the world. He states the obvious when explaining that the U.S. has lost any sort of "moral high ground" since 9/11, and especially with the criminal war of Iraq. Williams knows that if the neocons were to have their way, war will be spread into Syria and Iran soon enough. It is alarming that so many Americans still believe this kind of objectivity is 'anti-American.' It is time to remind the country what liberty really means.

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.”

Williams suggested American leadership had broken down: “We have only one global hegemonic power. It is not accumulating territory: it is trying to accumulate influence and control. That’s not working.”

He contrasted it unfavourably with how the British Empire governed India. “It is one thing to take over a territory and then pour energy and resources into 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.”