Aussie Bishop to Protest Bush

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Oct 20, 2003

A Melbourne paper reports that a Catholic bishop will protest President Bush's stopover visit to Australia.

Bishop Pat Power told The Age he was planning to speak at the protest rally on Thursday because he wanted to make a positive appeal to President Bush to be "a builder of peace in the world". "We should be having a war on poverty rather than a war on terror," Bishop Power said. Although he had not yet prepared his speech, Bishop Power planned to express criticism of how the United States had acted since the September 11 terrorist attack.

He argued that, far from solving the problem of terrorism, the actions of the US and the West had worsened the situation. "We see from the alleged tape from Osama bin Laden that there is now a greater divide between them and us," Bishop Power said.

A man who craves the media limelight, Bishop Power has long been deemed to be half-a-bubble off plumb, and I can't imagine that those with morally earnest objections to the war in Iraq will feel pleased to watch him thrust himself to the front of the company. His criticism seems incoherent on its own terms: is Bush to be faulted because he acted unjustly or to be faulted because he "worsened the situation"? If Osama bin Laden had released a video announcing his purchase of the San Diego Padres franchise, would Power retract his objections in the name of world peace?