08/26/2004: "Academics weigh in on Iraq"

The National Council of Churches has a link on the bottom of its home page for an outfit called Church Folks for a Better America. Organized by Princeton Seminary professor George Hunsinger, it includes some high-powered people among its initiators, including William Sloane Coffin, Jr., Stanley Hauerwas of Duke, David Hollenbach, S. J., of Boston College, Glen Stassen of Fuller Seminary, Miroslav Volf of the Yale Divinity School, and Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners. CFBA is, in turn, a project of the Coalition for Peace Action, which includes among its sponsors such certified moonbats as Noam Chomsky, Catholic Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit, Harry Belafonte, and Daniel Ellsberg. Among the "analysts we like" listed on the CFBA page are left-wingers such as Stephen Zunes, Phyllis Bennis, and the incomparable crackpot Robert Fisk.

When CFBA considers why we are in Iraq, it lists articles from a variety of sources under five headings: 1) Is it oil?; 2) Is it profiteering?; 3) Is it Empire?; 4) Is it Israel? (all of which are answered in the affirmative); and 5) Is it Democracy? (guess�among others, an AsiaTimes article is cited that refers to the interim prime minister of Iraq, Iyad Allawi, as "Saddam without the mustache"). The possibility that genuine belief, based on information from many nations' intelligence services, that Iraq had WMDs and links to al-Qaeda is not even considered. And the idea that maybe, just maybe, Iraq is better off (if not yet fully or permanently democratic) without one of the world's most megalomaniacal mass murderers as its fuhrer is completely off the radar.

Lots of what's on the site is the standard stuff: Abu Ghraib's just as bad as anything Saddam did, the Iraqis all hate us, we should give the country to the UN, etc. It's an advocacy site, so I wouldn't expect balance, but I would think that with such stellar thinkers among those involved (several of whom I've read and think a lot of), there would be a bit more substance than the typical International ANSWER-MoveOn-WCC blowhardery.