The visit by former Iranian president Mohammed Khatami to Washington National Cathedral earlier this month precipitated a blizzard of demagogic commentary, some of it from the Anglican right. Neither the Cathedral nor the diocese has responded directly to these criticisms, beyond posting the remarks made before and after Khatami’s speech by Dean Samuel Lloyd of the Cathedral and Bishop John Bryson Chane of the diocese. However, those interested in learning more about the speech and about diplomatic relations with Iran might find these five contributions helpful.
This balanced report, by Eric Fingerhut of Washington Jewish Week makes it clear that Jewish opinion on the visit was not uniform.
This essay, by Steven C. Clemons, director of the American strategy program at the New America Foundation here in DC begins as follows:
“As the Pulitzer Prize winning historian John Dower tells the story so well about Japan and the United States, states that move towards war often demonize each other’s leaders and whole societies in order to stir and consolidate public opinion and steel their citizens for big sacrifices ahead.
“As the White House continues to beat a drum on Iran, leaders on both sides will find ways to dehumanize the other side’s key state figures.
“This hasn’t happened with former Iran President Mohammed Khatami quite yet, but word is out that Senator Rick Santorum and his allies are outraged about the Iranian leader’s visit and out trying to serve Khatami with a subpoena regarding war crimes. But what Santorum hasn’t figured out is that his party’s CEO, President Bush as well as Secretary of State Rice extended Khatami a visa because he is considered to be one of the good guys in Iran — and a potential ally in the long run.”
It is unfortunate that Bishops John Lipscomb, Edward Little and Geralyn Wolf, who lectured us publicly on our “shallow” understanding of Middle Eastern affairs didn’t have a chance to talk to someone like Clemens before they called upon the Cathedral to cancel the event. They might also have been edified by a conversation with former ambassador Joe Montville, who was the Cathedral’s principal adviser on the visit. Montville spent 23 years working for the State Department in North Africa and the Middle East before becoming chief of the Near East Division and then director of the Office of Global Issues, and my sense is that the bishops would have been gratified by the depth of his knowledge. We weren’t able to arrange these conversations, however, because, schedules being what they are, the bishops weren’t able to get in touch with us before releasing their statement to the media.
(Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright thought the visit was a good idea, too. But I digress.)
In this column by Douglas Savage, assistant director of the Institute of World Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, writes that: “the desire to fit America’s foes into a single, homogenous bundle stands in the way of a more nuanced and ultimately more effective foreign policy. Today’s tendency to place every demonstrated or potential adversary that appropriates the language of Islam into the same terrorist basket has led to policy decisions that are ultimately harmful to U.S. interests in the region.”
You can feed your inner wonk by learning more about the New American Foundation’s recent conference “U. S. Strategy in towards Iran: Thinking Through the Unthinkables–Beyond a binary choice?”
And finally, it is worth remembering that President Bush personally approved Khatami’s visa because, as he told Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal : I was interested to hear what he had to say.
Dean Lloyd had it right when he said to Khatami: “In our own time Pope John Paul, II who met in 1999 with our guest this evening, understood that if the church is to facilitate healing and transformation, it cannot live on the margins of controversy uttering hopeful pieties. Rather it must immerse itself in the struggles that convulse the human family. Reconciliation requires us to seek partners to take risks to hear what these potential partners say and to examine what they do. And requires us to submit ourselves to the same searching scrutiny.”