Levitt Letter Extra News

By Mark D. Tooley
www.frontpagemagazine.com

The chief lobbyist for the church to which President Bush belongs has become one of the angriest critics of the Iraq War, which he blames on Bush�s criminal �lies,� Israel, oil interests and American arrogance.

Jim Winkler of the United Methodist Board of Church and Society has made the U.S.-led liberation of Iraq the special target of his ire over the last three years. Winkler�s agency has a $5 million annual budget and a staff of two dozen people.

From his perch in the prominently placed Methodist Building on Capitol Hill, sitting right across the street from the U.S. Capitol and the U.S. Supreme Court, Winkler routinely denounces Bush and fellow Methodist Vice President Cheney for their �unjust and illegal� war.

Whether making statements in the nation�s capital, or delivering speeches to liberal church activists around the country, Winkler is consistent in his conspiratorial allegations and assumption of the worst motives of the United States.

�High crimes have been committed against the people of the United States and Iraq,� Winkler told a gathering of liberal United Methodists meeting in Kentucky last November. �We were led into war under false premises. The manipulation of intelligence is staggering. The stench is so great; Bush has distanced himself from Vice President Cheney, another United Methodist. So much for unity.�

Winkler told the approving crowd, �The Bush White House systematically ignored the highest levels of Iraqi intelligence, and there are now more than 2000 plus troops dead.�

Repeating the usual canard that a supposedly secular Saddam Hussein would not align with radical Islam, Winkler drew this comparison: �This is like saying Timothy McVeigh [perpetrator of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing], who served in the U.S. Army, was connected to President Clinton.� He also opined, �As bad as Saddam Hussein was, he was not threatening.�

�The war is about oil,� Winkler charged, simplistically. �We would not have gone in there if the chief export was artichokes.� He explained, �If you are an American consumer, you are caught up in a system that perpetuates injustice.�

Last March, Winkler addressed another liberal Methodist caucus group, this time in Portland, Oregon, insisting that the �war in Iraq remains a disaster despite the seemingly good news of the election.�

�To date, I cannot think of a single person who has been held accountable for this illegal war of aggression,� Winkler complained, faulting the U.S. for 100,000 Iraqi war deaths and additional hundreds of thousands of victims under U.S. supported sanctions by the United Nations.

Winkler decried the �numerous atrocities perpetrated by our nation in Iraq.� He told of an ostensible conversation with a �young Marine� who described his unit�s massacring surrendering Iraqis. Faulting the U.S. led occupation for Iraqi suicide bombers, Winkler offered this scenario: �Imagine if such attacks took place very single day across the United States while a foreign military invasion force occupied our major cities, arresting and torturing Americans.�

Winkler faulted Israel and the United States as the causes of strife in the Middle East. �The starting place, the beginning point, the central, undisputable, inescapable, absolutely necessary foundation of a Middle East peace is the end of the twin illegal occupations maintained by the United States and Israel of Iraq, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. All else flows from there.�

In March 2003, immediately before Saddam�s ouster, Winkler shared this scenario with liberal United Methodist activists, in which he compared the impending U.S. led liberation of Iraq with a hypothetical overthrow of the U.S. government:

�Imagine if the most powerful nations in the world concluded that the United States government had to be overthrown by force and replaced with outside rule because we produced and possessed vast quantities of weapons of mass destruction, had an unelected leader, were the greatest destroyers of the global environment, consumed far more of the world�s resources than was our due, engaged in covert actions, resulting in the overthrow and destabilization of sovereign nations, carried out capital punishment against minors, aggressively redistributed our wealth to the rich at the expense of the poor and was a violent, racist society.�

Of course, Winkler never produced such a searing critique of Saddam Hussein�s regime, whose crimes apparently did not equal those of the Bush regime. Through the UN sanctions, Winkler surmised that the United States had �contributed� to the deaths of more Iraqis than Saddam had ever killed.

With typical sophistication, Winkler concluded that the Iraq invasion was about oil, to �avenge George W. Bush�s Daddy,� and in pursuit of �our unquestioning support for Israel� and �schemes cooked up by senior Bush officials in cahoots with Israeli leaders.�

Few of Winkler�s statements provide assurance that he has great affection for his own country. In his Puget Sound speech of February 2004, he uncharitably declared, �the United States was born, in a sense, of war. How can it be otherwise for those of us who live in a land stolen from its native people and built on the backs of slaves?� Indeed, Winkler urged Americans to confess to the myths that guide them: �male superiority; white supremacy, [and] Western, particularly American, exceptionalism.�

Winkler�s insistence that he is not na�ve about the world particularly persuasive. In his February 2004 speech, he described the Free World�s decades-long confrontation with the old Soviet bloc this way: �Some $13 trillion dollars was spent on the military and intelligence agencies from 1945 to 1989 in a Cold War against a phantom superpower.�

Winkler�s shrill protests, conspiracy theories, and anti-American bias notwithstanding, he still heads America�s largest church lobby office and is arguably the Religious Left�s chief spokesman in the nation�s capital. Like much of the Religious Left, he seems more preoccupied with building an imaginary human utopia than contributing to the eternal Kingdom of God.

By John Zarocostas
Washington Times

U.S. and Israeli officials are concerned that Saudi Arabia may be breaking the promise it made when it entered the World Trade Organization last year by hosting a meeting next week on the Arab economic boycott of Israel.

“I think this is a bit too much,” said Itzhak Levanon, Israel’s ambassador to the WTO, noting it has been only three months since Saudi Arabia was admitted to the organization on terms that require it to treat Israel like any other WTO member.

The promise was that the Saudis would not seek an exemption for Israel from WTO requirements to treat all members equally. The exemption would have preserved its participation, along with other Arab states, in a boycott of Israel.

In Washington, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Trade Representative’s office said officials from the Department of Commerce and other agencies have been in contact with the Saudis over the issue.

Shaun Donnelly, the assistant U.S. trade representative for Europe and the Middle East, will raise the matter during a visit to Saudi Arabia next week, she said.

Liaison officers from regional offices responsible for coordinating the boycott of Israel are to meet in Jidda from March 13 to 15, according to a schedule posted on the official Web site of the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference.

Salem el-Honi, high commissioner of the OIC office that runs the boycott, was quoted yesterday in the Jerusalem Post saying representatives of all 57 countries would attend the meeting “and we will discuss coordination among the various offices to strengthen the boycott.”

The boycott, imposed by the Arab League in 1945, seeks to isolate Israel by barring trade with the Jewish state and in some cases companies that do business in Israel. The OIC monitors compliance through its own Israeli Boycott Office, whose officers are to meet next week.

Adherence to the boycott has softened over the years even among Arab states as countries like Egypt and Jordan established diplomatic and economic links with Israel. Participation in the boycott by the United Arab Emirates has emerged as an issue during the debate in Washington over a deal giving a Dubai company control over six American seaports.

Acting under U.S. pressure, Saudi Arabia chose not to seek an exemption from WTO rules for its relations with Israel when it joined the organization. Mr. Levanon said in an interview yesterday that he considered the hosting of next week’s OIC meeting a violation of that commitment.

WTO chief Pascal Lamy and Eirik Glenne, chairman of the WTO’s ruling general council, “should call to the attention of Saudi Arabia that it must not violate the rules of the WTO,” he said. “We’re waiting to see what they do.”

As a new WTO member, Saudi Arabia “should be more cautious” about its actions toward another WTO member, Mr. Levanon added.

WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell said the organization had not received a formal complaint about the Jidda meeting to date and noted that Saudi Arabia’s accession to the trade organization “was agreed by consensus.”

However, the issue is of concern in Washington, where U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman was asked during a hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee in February about Saudi Arabia’s observance of the boycott.

“It’s a big concern of the United States, of course, because we worked with Saudi Arabia on the issue of their WTO accession,” Mr. Portman replied.

“Saudi Arabia did not, when they joined the WTO, invoke non-application [of WTO rules] with regard to Israel or anybody else. So as far as we’re concerned, Saudi Arabia is required under the WTO to provide that treatment to all the members of the WTO that they have agreed to,” he said.

Members of the Saudi delegation to the WTO could not be reached for comment.

An international trade lawyer, speaking on the condition that he not be identified, said that under WTO rules it was up to the Israelis to open legal proceedings against the Saudis if they feel they have a grievance.

Some trade diplomats noted that Israel and Saudi Arabia, while political adversaries, conduct de facto trade through third countries in the region.