Interfaith meeting urges Iraq pullout by U.S

Christian Century, May 17, 2003

The day before President Bush formally declared the end of major combat in Iraq, more than 75 Christian, Islamic and Jewish figures who had opposed the U.S.-led invasion took another stance contrary to the White House policies--they urged the U.S. to pull back swiftly from military occupation and unilateral control of Iraq's reconstruction.

"This is not a time for euphoria," said Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches. The NCC cosponsored the two-day "summit" in Chicago that ended April 30 with a statement saying that "while a repressive regime has been destroyed" and President Saddam Hussein chased from power, "war is a blunt instrument, which provides no lasting solution [and] often leads to further violence."

Sayyid Muhammad Syeed, secretary general of the Islamic Society of North America, cautioned that through the U.S. society was able to build over time a nation that respects pluralism, "these traditions cannot be imposed on other countries." The summit organizers, including the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, called on Washington to "bring the U.S. occupation of Iraq to a prompt end" by transferring authority to the UN and multilateral organizations to work with Iraqi people on reconstruction.

President Bush, in a televised address to the nation May 1, reviewed the fast conclusion to fighting in Iraq and implications for the war on terrorism.

Although the summit organizers also called for U.S. leaders to "draw back from the use and threat of first-strike war," the president seemed to pay little attention to mainline Protestant, Catholic and other religious voices. For months before the fighting, they urged multinational, diplomatic solutions and had labeled the war unjust on moral grounds, but popular opinion favored the Bush administration before and after the fighting.