NEWSWEEK: You have signed a petition describing a possible attack on Iraq as “immoral and illegal.” Why?
Rowan Williams: I think the word “illegal” was used in connection with the way both the “just-war” tradition of the church and international law discourage pre-emptive action in the absence of some distinct act of aggression. And it’s “immoral” because in classic Christian philosophy and ethics, prudence is part of morality and the calculation of consequences has to be a very important part of the decision-making process. That’s apart from the obvious issue of civilian casualties.
What consequences do you fear?
One is that the states of the region are not at the moment models of political stability, and any action that presents Saddam Hussein quite falsely as some kind of Muslim martyr will strengthen the hand of extreme Islamic groups in countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia. Also, Christians in the region without exception say their position as minorities would be put seriously at threat. We have [already] seen extremist reaction against Christians in Pakistan, so there is very understandable anxiety. One more thing. It’s a very long shot, but India and Pakistan are currently in very delicate relations, and pre-emptive action against a possible aggressor may not be the message that we want to give out.
Are there any circumstances in which intervention would be justifiable?
If a clear act of aggression had taken place, which could be met by some sort of concerted, coalition-based response, including other Muslim states. One aspect of the Afghan action last year was the extreme care that was taken to draw in Muslim states, to avoid the impression of any sort of anti-Muslim action. Also, if the United Nations were to authorize an action based on a very clear, very visible calculation of public and regional risk.
Is there a danger that you are surrendering your own judgment to that of the United Nations?
That’s why I would still have some questions about just giving blanket [approval]. I would regard United Nations approbation as a necessary–rather than a sufficient–condition.
Isn’t there a case for saying that the people of Iraq deserve to be liberated from an oppressive regime, just as much as the Afghans from the Taliban?
There is a very strong case for saying that, and that is where the difficult calculations come in. If the price of liberating the people of Iraq is the setting of what could be dangerous precedents for international relations by ill-advised military action, you would have to think twice about it. Secondly, the saving of the people of Iraq requires investment in long-term nation-building. We have a country whose political institutions are rudimentary and whose physical infrastructure has been systematically undermined for a decade and whose technology has largely been at the service of attempts to restore its military capacity. It is not a six-month job. I would be slightly easier in my mind if I saw clearer evidence of how this task was going to be taken forward. I have no complacency about the condition of the Iraqi people. It’s appalling, and Saddam Hussein is a monstrous tyrant. The temptation is to be seen to be doing something.
The church was accused of appeasement in its attitude to Hitler, no?
That was a case in which you were dealing with what you might call old-fashioned modern wars. In the 1930s, we were looking at conflicts of typical sovereign states, conflicts that had their origins in the breach of clear treaty obligations that bound us to action in circumstances and where the localizing of the threat was very clear and concrete. Since at least 1950–the beginning of the nuclear age, broadly speaking–we have dealt with a world where conflict is much less localized and much less bound-up with the activities of sovereign states. Quite a careful distinction has to be drawn between the Europe of 1938 and the atmosphere of the postmodern environment in which we stand, where because of information technology and military technology and economics, the consequences of particular reactions to military crises are so much more complicated.
Both Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George Bush are professing Christians. They must be making their own calculations. How would you persuade them that your calculations were superior?
There is a perfectly real moral passion about the atrocity of Saddam Hussein’s regime–something to which we have woken up rather later in the day. I would want to say to them, and it may sound strange coming from a cleric, but morality is about calculation, as well. It is not about the grand gesture. I would also want to talk about how, in the medium- to long-term, you combat a tyrannous and oppressive regime by building positive alternatives and setting up positive images and openings in neighbor states. That is a proper Christian concern because you are talking–among other things–about concepts of common security that have very deep roots in Christian tradition.
Are you concerned by the harsh public criticisms of Islam by the Christian right in America?
It worries me a great deal that caricatures of Islam should be peddled. One thing that emerges very clearly to me in interfaith discussions in this part of Britain has been the clarity of a great many Muslim teachers–and they don’t get much exposure in the media–about the incompatibility of terrorism and the Qur’an. I have heard some extremely eloquent expositions of human rights and human nature in the Qur’an. I sometimes think that the further away from large ordinary Muslim communities that Christian commentators are, the more caricatured their views become.
You were in Manhattan on September 11. How has that affected your thinking?
I was in an office block belonging to Trinity Church about 200 yards from the Twin Towers. It has colored my feelings to the extent that it is to me a terrible thought that the suffering I saw could be inflicted by us on others. That’s a gut reaction, but one that I felt very strongly as we were being evacuated from the building that morning amid a cloud of rubble and the collapse of the second tower. It also prompted me and many of the Americans I was with to ask–not in an exonerating way–where such hatred comes from. The decisions terrorists make may be evil, but you still have to ask where they come from.
Did you have similar qualms over military action against the Taliban?
I did. Partly because I thought it would have been at least interesting to see if the Taliban’s bluff could have been called at the point when they said they would have been prepared to hand over Osama Bin Laden to an Islamic court. It would have been a very interesting challenge to see if some international institution could have put together a plausible Islamic court. There were alternatives that we were perhaps reluctant to explore. As it happened, the war was briefer than I expected and its outcome–at least in the short-term–was more successful. My inner jury on nation-building is still out.
title: “Words Against War” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-31” author: “Sandra Holmes”
At the head of the protestors is Labour member of Parliament George Galloway. Over the last decade, the left-winger–a regular visitor to Iraq–has emerged as the principal scourge of the government’s policy toward Saddam Hussein, arguing vehemently against both sanctions and military action. Now he’s at the forefront of the growing movement that opposes an Anglo-American invasion. Next month, Galloway, a cofounder of the Stop the War Coalition, will address an antiwar rally in London that’s expected to attract some 400,000 supporters. He spoke to NEWSWEEK’s William Underhill in London. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: Prime Minister Blair has been sending some confused signals over the likely timing of any attack on Iraq, both talking tough and appearing to recommend delay. How do you assess his position?
George Galloway: One would need to be some kind of psychoanalyst to answer that question properly. It’s impossible to say whether the belligerent and provocative language that he is adopting is a cover for the attempt to slow down Bush and keep him on the diplomatic-[United Nations] track, or whether it is more like the role played by Thatcher in 1990-91 when she was a driving force for the [Persian Gulf] war. My fear is that his public persona is so strengthening the war party in the United States that soon the very momentum of the war party will carry us over the cliff into catastrophe.
But you don’t reject the idea that Blair may in fact be acting as a restraining influence on the president.
If that turns out to be so, I’ll be first in line to take my hat off to Blair. If not, the so-called restraining influence will not only have had no effect, but the aggressive public posture–which was presumably its price–will actually have helped to bring about the war. And Blair will have tested his premiership to destruction.
Surely it’s too crude to suggest that a sophisticated politician such as Blair is ready to follow President Bush without question.
I have to express a degree of surprise [at the idea]. One could understand the relationship between President Clinton and Blair, even if one didn’t share it. They were culturally attuned; two men of the same generation, of the same politics, of the same stripe. But no one in Britain can understand the relationship between a Labour prime minister and a right-wing Republican zealot of such dubious democratic credentials as the current president of the United States.
You are helping to organize a mass antiwar demonstration in London next month. Do you really believe that such protests can still stop a war?
I do. And the main place it can be stopped is in Britain. If the American public–which, to say the least, is not overly enthusiastic about the war–knew that even the British would not join them, that could tip the scales. So Blair has a unique opportunity. If he seizes it, he will be a hero in the world. If he doesn’t, that opportunity will become a culpability. He will become the man who could have stopped the war but instead guaranteed that it happened.
Do you reckon the Americans could achieve a swift military victory?
Whatever people have been told by the propagandists, it will be a bloodbath. The idea that there are military lines [of Iraqi troops] out there in the desert which can simply be bombed by weaponry is simply preposterous. All the soldiers, all the tanks, all the armor, all the handguns are in the cities among the people. So if the bombardment is to weaken the Iraqi military, it will have to be of a Dresden-quality. [The German city of Dresden was leveled by Allied bombers in 1945.]
Supporters of the war argue that a successful invasion would free the people of Iraq from the rule of an unprincipled dictator.
I have never believed in killing people in order to set them free. [Besides] the likely outcome of an invasion and occupation of Iraq is the Yugoslavization of the country leading to chaos, bloodshed and vendetta on a grand scale. Sect will fight sect, party will fight party, region will fight region, ethnic group will fight ethnic group. Also, I never believed the Iraqi leader was anything but a dictator. I was standing outside the Iraqi Embassy demonstrating for human rights when British ministers and businessmen were inside selling them guns.
Wouldn’t the overthrow of Saddam Hussein at least diminish some of the threat of terrorism?
The threat of international chaos and terror will be fantastically enhanced by the presence of a 250,000-strong Western crusader invasion and occupation of an Arab-Muslim country. Anyone who thinks the world will be safer from terrorism when Western soldiers are on every street in Iraq is living in a fool’s paradise. The one man who is praying more for this war more ardently than [U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense] Paul Wolfowitz is Osama bin Laden. This is the very confrontation that he set out to engineer.
