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Britain
British clergy slam Bush, Blair
2003-12-29
Two British church leaders blasted Prime Minister Tony Blair on Monday for going to war in Iraq, with one bishop saying he and US President George Bush had acted like "a bunch of white vigilantes."
What if they'd acted like a bunch of black vigilantes? Or a bunch of Chinese vigilantes? G.W. and Tony have to work on that, get a little variety into their foreign policy...
Their criticism - plus an embarrassing contradiction over weapons of mass destruction by the US administrator of Iraq at the weekend - comes at the end of a miserable year for Blair whose popularity has tumbled over the invasion of Iraq.
"Cherie, my year has been just miserable. I've taken part in tumbling one iron-fisted dictator and scaring another into reforming, but the Archbishop... the Archbishop... doesn't like me."
"The Archbishop doesn't like you? Tony, I want a divorce."
The Archbishop of York, David Hope, who is the Church of England's second most senior churchman, said Blair had displayed "a real lack of listening" over Iraq and his claims of fallen dictator Saddam Hussein's arms capability remained unproven. "Undoubtedly a very wicked leader has been removed, but there are wicked leaders in other parts of the world," he added in an interview with The Times newspaper.
"Therefore we shouldn't remove any of them, ever."
Hope urged British churchgoers to pray for Blair, and said he and Bush should remember they will one day answer to God. "I want to say... that there is a higher authority before whom one day we all have to give an account," he said.
"Of course, if I actually believed that, I'd be saying entirely different things..."
The Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, was scathing about Blair's military alliance with Bush in Iraq. He likened them to a pair of mavericks fighting crime in multi-racial inner-city London.
That statement makes no sense, even for a churchman...
"For Bush and Blair to go into Iraq together was like a bunch of white vigilantes going into Brixton to stop drug-dealing. This is not to deny there's a problem to be sorted, just that they are not credible people to deal with it," he told The Independent newspaper.
Seems like they missed the Archbishop's drug dealer, doesn't it? I wonder which credible people His Excellency had in mind to deal with the problem?
"The world now needs a UN army in the way that Britain 200 years ago needed to turn its bands of militia in each town into a national police force."
He thinks a UN army would be the credible people? He doesn't read the papers, does he?
Wright said the religious conservatives surrounding Bush espouse "a very strange distortion of Christianity" while the fact "some of them stand to benefit financially from the reconstruction of Iraq" made their motives suspicious.
"Not that I believe any of it for a moment, of course, but suspicions have been raised... Could you help me get this meal out of my mouth, please?"
Blair braved major opposition in Britain before the March invasion, saw support rise as fighting began, but has since faced a barrage of criticism over the reasons for war and the handling of post-Saddam Iraq. He has said he would do it again and is "ready to meet my maker".
Posted by:Fred Pruitt

#17  Oh, they're done buggering altar boys and can turn themselves to other business?
Posted by: Raj   2003-12-29 10:53:42 PM  

#16  Offhand, I can name two wicked leaders in Britain that need removing. On the other hand, we can leave them in peace to continue sanctimoniously buggering each other.
Posted by: ed   2003-12-29 10:48:23 PM  

#15   "For Bush and Blair to go into Iraq together was like a bunch of white vigilantes going into Brixton to stop drug-dealing."

(Cue The Clash song and All Hail Bush & Blair as the new "Guns of Brixton"!

'When al Qaeda kicks in your front door/ How you gonna come?/ With your hands on your head or on the trigger of your gun?')

"This is not to deny there's a problem to be sorted, just that they are not credible people to deal with it," he told The Independent newspaper.

(Who has that credibility? You guys remember the Monty Python skit "The Bishop"? Maybe he fancies his chances v the Yardies?)
Posted by: JDB   2003-12-29 7:24:01 PM  

#14  Thank GOD we don't have a state religion in the U.S. These ?men? now realize that there were VERY wrong over the war and are trying to fix it by attacking Blair? They need to take a LONG look at themselves in the mirror and think about what they stand/stood for. You can call the war in Iraq anything you want but getting rid of that EVIL government was, is, and will always be the right choice. The Clergy in the COE should take this opportunity and not remind people that they SUPPORTED a murderous dictator. God Bless all leaders in the coalition of the willing. PM Tony Blair, America WILL NEVER FORGET that you stood by us.
Posted by: Cyber Sarge (VRWC CA Chapter)   2003-12-29 7:20:10 PM  

#13  Raised Episcopalian in a small church in NJ. Everything fine and old-fashioned until Bishop Spong took over the Diocese of Newark (NJ) - didn't believe in any of the tenants of the faith! I truly believe that God sends people like this our way every so often to get us off our butts. I stayed, working on/with the vestry of my church. We went to minimum funding back to the diocese - he tried to close us down, even replacing the priest with his own man. As it happened, when Spong retired, the diocese didn't have a job for the priest, who was thrown out the door - after trashing the church-owned house he lived in. The church is still there, still Episcopal, but I know they are taking a careful look at the alternatives. My family and I are now 1800 miles west, my son's in a Jesuit high school, and we go to chapel there!
Posted by: OldeForce   2003-12-29 6:34:37 PM  

#12  Actually, the UN and Blair may have to answer for the 10,000+ Iraqis who died while these two insisted on 6 months palavering about whether to act or not. Meanwhile, George "Avenger of the Bones" Bush will enjoy the support of the 40,000+ and growing number of Iraqis who didn't die after the Invasion.

Bush, and the Coalition Armed Forces, class of 2003.

Bring it on!
Posted by: Ptah   2003-12-29 6:02:59 PM  

#11  Don't shoot! I'm a Baptist!
Posted by: Shipman   2003-12-29 5:55:12 PM  

#10  I would damn them, but they have already done so themselves. I have no illusions: but for God's saving Grace, I'd be meeting those vermin in Hell. The difference is that I realize my errors and repent, they do not.

The Church of England, were it a sailing ship, is on the verge of becoming a hulk. From years of neglect, its has broken its rudder (Values/Traditions) and let the sails (Scripture/Faith) tatter into rags, and its hull (The Church as the Body of Christ) is rotting from the transom up. The barnacles and worms chewing their way through the hull are the Looney Left Clergy and Bishops, who have long ago lost sight of the Truth of Christ and continue to feed and grow fat (playing to popularity rather than morality), heedless of the damage they are doing.
Posted by: Anonymous   2003-12-29 4:11:41 PM  

#9  The Church of England heirarchy epitomises white middle class guilt.

Otherwise this is more cognitive dissonance. These guys are supposed to be concerned with moral questions. Their opposition to the Iraq war is looking more and more immoral with each new mass grave found. So they end up saying silly things in an attempt to justify their position.

A few weeks back there was considerable talk here in Australia of the Anglican (Church of England) splitting becuase of this kind of left wing claptrap. The new church would espouse a more robust and muscular christianity and be centred around the Anglican church in Nigeria, which apparently has more Anglicans than any other country.
Posted by: phil_b   2003-12-29 4:11:15 PM  

#8  "Will no-one rid me of this troublesome priest?"
Posted by: mojo   2003-12-29 4:06:22 PM  

#7  C of E has always been a political tool. Don't ever forget that. The LLL elements are firmly ensconced in the upper levels of the C of E and are rapidly destroying that Church from the inside. Their lack of recourse to ancient doctrinal roots like the Catholic Church has, and lack of adaptability as the US Protestants are, has doomed the CE to fail as an institution as it rots from within by its own lack of faith and doctrine. They have left behind both the modern Bibilical basis and the recourse to Tradition and Absolute Values that are required as a foundation for the Church to continue.
Posted by: OldSpook   2003-12-29 4:05:17 PM  

#6  And so, while Islamic fundies continue their bid to pound the nails in Christianity's coffin, Western religious leaders take the opportunity to, um, pound the nails in Christianity's coffin.
Posted by: BH   2003-12-29 3:20:48 PM  

#5  I don't think that Catholicism is that unusual these days in England - I think it's currently the biggest religion. (The Jedi religion is closing the gap with almost 400,000 members according to the 2001 census)

As for the C of E bishops, they are all loopy and have been for some time. Their line on the war was that there needed to be definitive proof of WMD before action could be taken. In response someone suggested that if they applied such rigor to their own jobs, they should all resign.
Posted by: A   2003-12-29 3:14:29 PM  

#4  I think both Blairs are Catholic. I understand they attend services at the Church of St. Vincent at the Brompton Oratory in London. The Latin Mass there on Sundays with the choir is excellent.
Posted by: Tibor   2003-12-29 3:08:57 PM  

#3  I'd like to take these two self-styled "Christians" and frog-march them to the edge of one of Saddam's mass graves and force them to explain to the wailing, sobbing relatives there why we should have let Saddam go on murdering their loved ones.

Damned inhuman, immoral bastards.
Posted by: Dave D.   2003-12-29 3:05:47 PM  

#2  Blair has done more for advancing human rights more than these KKK-styled white robed assclowns hiding behind a clerical collar. I wonder if any of them looked in the Iraqi mass grave photo album lately [or ever]?
Posted by: Alaska Paul   2003-12-29 2:57:39 PM  

#1  I read somewhere that Cherie Blair is Catholic, which is relatively unusual in England, so she might not care too much what the Archbishop things.

Blair is more ready to meet his maker than any Bishop quoted here. He acted to remove an evil from the face of the earth, something these blathering wankers have obviously never done.
Posted by: JAB   2003-12-29 2:49:06 PM  

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