Be-Enemying Friends

Scott Horton:

When Bush’s presidency is written up for the history books, one aspect will merit a special chapter, and that is the amazing alchemy by which Bush turned America’s staunchest allies around the world into disaffected onlookers, if not in fact enemies. He is gifted with the opposite of the diplomatic Midas touch.

Another story out on Sunday, following right on the heels of the crushing defeat Australian voters dealt to John Howard, showed the depth of the problem, which most Americans underassess.

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Cantebury and Anglican Primate, is not exactly a radical priest. He’s been solidly on the traditionalist side of the debates within the Anglican Communion on issues such as the ordination of women, the consecration of homosexuals as bishops and he has no equivocation in condemning abortion. But Williams’s conservatism had led him repeatedly to question the wisdom of Prime Minister Blair’s alignment with the United States in the War on Terror. And in an interview published this weekend, he unloaded. In fact, he called George W. Bush’s America a threat to Christian civilization. The Sunday Times (London)reports:

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. 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”. . .