http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,175245,00.html Methodist Bishops Repent Iraq War 'Complicity' Thursday, November 10, 2005 By Kaukab Jhumra Smith WASHINGTON — Ninety-five bishops from President Bush's church said Thursday they repent their "complicity" in the "unjust and immoral" invasion and occupation of Iraq. "In the face of the United States administration's rush toward military action based on misleading information, too many of us were silent," said a statement of conscience signed by more than half of the 164 retired and active United Methodist bishops worldwide. President Bush is a member of the United Methodist Church, according to various published biographies. The White House did not return a request for comment on the bishops' statement. Although United Methodist leadership has opposed the Iraq war in the past, this is the first time that individual bishops have confessed to a personal failure to publicly challenge the buildup to the war. The signatures were also an instrument for retired bishops to make their views known, said bishop Joseph H. Yeakel, who served in the Baltimore-Washington area from 1984 to 1996. The current bishop for the Baltimore-Washington area, John R. Schol, also signed the statement. The statement avoids making accusations, said retired Bishop Kenneth L. Carder, instructor at Duke University's divinity school and an author of the document. "We would have made the statement regardless of who the president was. It was not meant to be either partisan or to single out any one person," Carder said. "It was the recognition that we are all part of the decision and we are all part of a democratic society. We all bear responsibility." Stith, who spent more than three years after his retirement working in East Africa -- including with Rwandan refugees -- said going to war over the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks did not solve the real problems behind them. The real issues are that much of the world lives in poverty, desperation and depression, he said, while an affluent minority of the world often oppresses them. Americans need to take responsibility for their world, Stith said. "To ignore things and to assume that persons in the government have all knowledge is to reject our franchise and our democracy," Stith said. About six weeks ago, Carder discussed the idea of a public statement with other colleagues who "had concerns" about the war, and the idea just grew, Carder said. Last week, the statement circulated during a biannual meeting of the Council of Bishops, "and before the week was out, we had 95 bishops," Carder said. In their statement, the bishops pledged to pray daily for the end of the war, for its American and Iraqi victims and for American leaders to find "truth, humility and policies of peace through justice." "We confess our preoccupation with institutional enhancement and limited agendas while American men and women are sent to Iraq to kill and be killed, while thousands of Iraqi people needlessly suffer and die, while poverty increases and preventable diseases go untreated," the statement said. Some bishops declined to sign their names, although they supported the statement, Carder said. This week's statement follows years of public opposition to the Iraq war by the church. In May 2004, the Council of Bishops passed a resolution that "lamented the continued warfare" and asked the U.S. government to seek international help to rebuild Iraq. The church's women's division called for an end to the war in 2002. And in 2001, the church's head of social policy, Jim Winkler, said the push for war was "without any justification according to the teachings of Christ," according to a report by The (London) Observer. Public approval of the war has steadily declined since the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003. At the time, seven of 10 Americans said the U.S. did the right thing. By this October, only four of 10 Americans did, according to CBS polls. About 11 million people belong to the United Methodist Church, including 200,000 in the Baltimore-Washington area. Carder and Stith said they hoped their statement would encourage more people to think about peacemaking. "The only solution seems to be to stay the course. But if you're on the wrong course, you don't stay the course," Carder said. "At the heart of the Christian faith is the willingness to acknowledge mistakes."
More people should think about 'peacemaking?' Uh, don't you think the administration would vote for peace if that was an option, lol?
If the insurgents agreed to come back into the political process you don't think the administration would welcome that?
You lost me. I don't know what you're talking about now. I'd assumed you meant that if peace had been an option, the administration would have opted that way. Without a war there are no insurgents, so I don't follow you here.
But yes, the initial mistake of the war and the subsequent mistakes of carrying it out having been made, I think the administration would welcome anything that would help get them out of this incredible mess. That's an entirely different thing than suggesting the administration is inclined to opt toward peace generally and they certainly were not inclined that way when they started this unnecessary and unjust war.
Are "institutional enhancement" and "limited agendas" codewords for something else like abortion, gay marriage, and stem cell research?
and how did saddamite iraq treat homosexuals? was it a bastion of advanced stem cell research? could women receive abortion-on-demand as they do here in the US? one of the most ironic implications of the bishops, batmans, and the left's in general antiwar stances is the extent to which they ignore the conditions that existed in iraq prior to march 2003.
Yet another charge by basso without any shred of proof. Nobody has ignored pre-war conditions in Iraq, and we all were against Saddam, and all wanted him out of power. Why do you keep making these types of charges and offer absolutely no proof that the batmans, liberals, and others are guilty of what you charge?
basso, Iraq's economy was in ruins because of the Iraq-Iran war then the sanctions in 1991. War does not help the losers' economy. Before 1980, Iraq was one of the liberalest nations in the region. Women could be anything, the economy was great, many public works, secularism, and many other trends. In fact, all nations do trend towards liberalization because it creates the most potent economies.
That's a interseting point Basso. Actually, some political pundits claim that neo-con's human rights agenda has a lot more commonality with liberals than the traditionally "realist" approach adopted by Bush Senior (see George Packer's "Assassin's Gate"). But I digress. I wasn't attacking the church or Bush for their position on those issues (not in this thread, anyway). I really did want to know what the church was referring to when they talk about "institutional enhancement" and "limited agendas."
No, it isn't. It's just one more in a series of abhorrent, slanderous attempts by basso to insinuate all war critics and Bush critics (me, Scowcroft, the bishops, Pat Tillman, et al) are in bed with Saddam and Al Qaeda. basso hasn't had an intellectually honest point since this war started, so he's left to McCarthyist lies and innuendo.
OK, yeah I think you missed my meaning originally. I meant that they would opt for peace now, which is where I see the disconnect from the statement from the 'bishops.' But no, its not an unjust war. Unjust would have been leaving the Iraqis under Saddam's boot in the name of 'peace.' I don't want to derail your thread on the importance of the opinion of some Methodist bishops, but you felt it necessary to tack that part on so...
i actually agree with this, neoconservative foreign policy is, at it's heart, a marriage of wilsonian idealism with teddy roosevelt's big stick. the knee-jerk rejection by liberals of bush's foreign is also a rejection of their own former idealist tenants. it's what i mean when i speak of the new reactionary left.
please explain how this is an unjust war? unjust to whom, exactly? you toss the charges about, yet, there are no specifics. was it unjust to the kurds?, the marsh arabs? the ****e'ites? perhaps you mean the baathists, howard dean, and moveon? truly, i'd like to know.
Oh yeah, definitely they would opt for peace now. They don't have a choice. They're bleeding out. That was the point of the thread in the first place -- that Bush and his war are not only losing support now from a growing number of Independents and Republicans, but from the military and his own church. We've been round and round as to the relative justness of the war. Our disagreement lies in the cost of the war, the (IMO very dangerous) precedent of pre-emptive action and whether the result of our actions were a net gain or net loss in the war on terror. That's for starters. But that's for other threads. For now, we can agree to disagree.
I've explained this again and again, over hundreds of posts, over the past couple years. You come back with crap libel about me hating America and loving terror. I'm done wasting my time on you. Do a search if you want your answer. It's out there again and again and again.
Yep. Just don't want your loud 'nay' to go by without a balancing reply . One thing that should at least be mentioned so as to avoid misleading readers: most of those who've recently started questioning their support are not like you - they don't consider the war as prima facie 'unjust.' Please don't encourage an inference that such is the case.
I think some liberals would support a war based on humanitarian and human rights reasons, even if that war were proposed by a Republican president. The reason why liberals are so pissed is because: 1. The perceived influence of big oil and Haliburton interest in our decision to go to war. I'm not saying this influence actually exists, but the perception is there. 2. Bush focused on the WMDs instead of the human rights issue in the beginning. If Bush had placed the focus on human rights in the very beginning, some liberals would have supported him. Of course, Bush would've lost a lot of moderate voters, who would only support the war as a last resort for self defense. Bush's focus on WMDs was an appeal to the moderate voters.
I think that's fair to say. Of course, most of those who recently started questioning it are American R's and I's (many of whom have opposed it for some time). But I think it's fair to say those ones that have opposed it since the beginning -- a group that comprises a significant majority of world opinion -- have always considered it unjust as well as illegal.
