Washington Office, stated clerk oppose U.S. strategy to send more troops to Iraq
By Craig M. Kibler, Staff Writer, January 30, 2007
The Washington Office of the Presbyterian Church (USA), citing a statement by Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick, is telling Presbyterians that the denomination opposes President George W. Bush’s plan to send more U.S. troops to Iraq.
In an “Action Alert” e-mail sent Jan. 29 to Presbyterians throughout the country, the Washington Office said, “The Presbyterian Church (USA) has responded to this new strategy with a statement in opposition to the escalation of the war.”
The Washington Office also urged Presbyterians to contact their elected representatives in Congress “to vote for any bill or resolution that opposes the president’s plan to increase the number of troops in Iraq. We do not need more troops. We need a cease-fire, diplomacy and economic development.”
The statement cited by the Washington Office was an article by Kirkpatrick that appeared in the January issue of Perspectives, which is an online publication of his office. “In 2004, the 216th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) made a clear judgment ‘that the invasion of Iraq has been immoral, unwise and illegal,'” he wrote, adding: “We believe that history has borne out the wisdom of the General Assembly’s action.”
Kirkpatrick urged the Bush administration “to give serious attention to the counsel of our General Assembly, other religious communities and the bipartisan Iraq Study Group to seek the stabilization and reconstruction in Iraq through other means.”
The Washington Office was more direct, saying that the administration’s Iraq strategy “will most likely continue to feed into an unending cycle of increasing violence, putting even more lives, U.S. and Iraqi, at risk.”
Accompanying Kirkpatrick’s article in Perspectives was an article written by Vernon Broyles, identified as the volunteer representative for public witness for the Office of the General Assembly. “No sign of an end to the violence is in sight,” Broyles wrote.
“In the face of the worsening internecine strife in Iraq and the continuing failure of U.S. military policy to ameliorate the situation,” he states, “the presenting dilemma is how to find a way out, short of total disaster.”
As with the Washington Office, Broyles provides no documentation for the statements in his article.
“Widespread agreement exists among much of the U.S. military leadership that ‘success’ by any measure is not attainable by simply continuing strategies that have been employed thus far,” he wrote. “That includes previous efforts to increase U.S. military presence in particularly troublesome parts of Baghdad and other areas. These ‘surges’ have been unable to quell the violence in any sustained fashion, whether it be inter-ethnic killing or actions opposition to the occupation.”
The president’s strategy, Broyles states, “can hardly be interpreted as anything short of an escalation of the current conflict. … Even more ominous is the president’s repetitious ‘good versus evil’ rhetoric with regard to Syria and Iran. … This threat is even more disturbing in the face of informed speculation that the administration may have given its blessing to Israel to use its own nuclear capability, at some point in the future, against Iran’s suspected nuclear programs.”
In his summation, Broyles wrote that the administration’s Iraq strategies “run counter to the moral, ethical and familial concerns of millions of Americans that surfaced in recent elections. It is time for the U.S. Congress, in whatever ways available to it, to tell the president ‘No!’ to further escalation of the conflict by the United States.”
In his blog, James D. Berkley questioned how the PCUSA could respond to the president’s Iraq strategy. He is the director of Presbyterian Action for Faith and Freedom, a committee of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C.
“Really?” Berkley asks. “How would ‘The Presbyterian Church (USA)’ be able to respond with a statement? General Assembly hasn’t met since last June. General Assembly Council is still more than a month away. So who is ‘The Presbyterian Church (USA)’ who has made some partisan political statement in opposition to the president’s plan?
“It turns out that the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) is actually the party who issued the statement (which read, for the most part, like boilerplate from the Democratic National Committee). Apparently,” he writes, “the Presbyterian Washington Office expects Presbyterians in general to consider a political statement by Clifton Kirkpatrick the same as an official resolution by the Presbyterian Church (USA).”
Berkley concludes that the PCUSA has not responded to the Iraq strategy, but that “a solitary leader has, however, overstepping his ecclesiastical authority in order to play secular politician.”
Craig M. Kibler is the Director of Publications for the Presbyterian Lay Committee and Executive Editor of The Layman and The Layman Online. He can be reached at cmkibler@www.layman.org.