Social-action board urges troop withdrawal from Iraq

United Methodist News Service
WASHINGTON—As State Department officials monitored results of a constitutional referendum in Iraq Oct. 17, the United Methodist social-action agency passed a resolution calling for withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country.
“As people of faith, we raise our voice in protest against the tragedy of the unjust war in Iraq,” the resolution said. “We urge the United States government to develop and implement a plan for the withdrawal of its troops. The U.S. invasion has set in motion a sequence of events which may plunge Iraq into civil war.”
Criticizing a war “waged on false premises,” the resolution went on to say, “Thousands of lives have been lost and hundreds of billions of dollars wasted in a war the United States initiated and should never have fought. ...We grieve for all those whose lives have been lost or destroyed in this needless and avoidable tragedy. Military families have suffered undue hardship from prolonged troop rotations in Iraq and loss of loved ones. It is time to bring them home.”
The resolution passed easily on the last day of the General Board of Church and Society’s Oct. 13-17 meeting, with only two no votes and one abstention.
In a separate resolution, the board called on Congress to create an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate detention and interrogation practices at U.S.-run facilities in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan.
The board applauded the U.S. Senate’s vote to prohibit the “cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment” of prisoners and said: “We do not believe that all those responsible have been held accountable.”
In addition, the agency’s elected directors:
> Urged the government of the Philippines to end human-rights violations.
> Hailed the recent presidential election in Liberia.
> Endorsed a boycott of Turtle Bay Resort by the California-Pacific Conference to support the hotel workers’ collective bargaining efforts.
> Announced the agency’s board of trustees would seek a declaratory judgment from the Superior Court of Washington, D.C., regarding use of the United Methodist Building Endowment Fund and Trust.
The timing of the Iraq resolution, at a moment when the Bush administration was hoping a new constitution would start to stabilize that country, didn’t concern James Winkler, the board’s top staff executive.
“A lot of people voted for the constitution to hasten the exit of the United States,” he said. “Iraqis want the United States out of Iraq, and we want the United States out of Iraq. I see us acting hand in glove with the Iraqi people today.”
But first, board members had to work to refine the resolution wording. Two members objected to wording they interpreted as critical of U.S. troops.
Pat Curtin, a board member from Conroe, Texas, and a veteran of the Korean War, said he remembered being shunned when he returned from the battlefield.
“They haven’t been there,” he said of some of his board colleagues. “They haven’t had this stuff thrown at them.”
Howard Mason, a board member from Seaford, Del., and a veteran of both World War II and the Korean War, joined Curtin in pushing for changes to the original draft.
“It’s an emotional thing because we were there,” he said, referring to wartime combat. “We’re against war, but we appreciate the G.I.s’ sacrifice.”
The Rev. Steve Sprecher of Lake Oswego, Ore., chair of the Peace with Justice Committee, praised the resolution process.
“This board holds as a high value hearing all opinions and finding ways to come as close as it can to reflect the beliefs of all,” he said. “There is a real respect for each other that is heartening. I hope it’s something that can be used as a model for other parts of the church.”
The issue in the Washington, D.C., court involves a question of whether the board is misusing its Building Endowment Fund and Trust.
The board received a clean audit from the KPMG accounting firm in 2003. But its 2004 audit has not been completed because a member of the General Council on Finance and Administration’s audit and review committee—for the second year in a row—has raised a concern about the possible misuse of board funds.
The allegations stem from the definition of the kind of activities the General Board of Church and Society can engage in. The unnamed audit committee member is asserting that the board’s predecessor agency, the Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals, could only pursue alcohol-related programs.
Established in 1917, the original board was combined over time with the boards of World Peace and Social and Economic Concerns to form what is today the General Board of Church and Society.
Winkler said the mandate of the Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals went beyond anti-alcohol efforts. Three legal opinions have upheld that the General Board of Church and Society is operating within the law in offering a wide range of programmatic activities.
Bishop James Swanson of the Holston Conference, chairman of the board’s trustees, urged other board members not to become emotional about the issue.
“The trustees are not anxious about this,” he said. “We would seek the declaratory judgment so that we can put this to rest one way or another. Don’t be fighting and fussing. Behave like persons who have been transformed by the blood of Jesus Christ.”