Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 8, 1991 TAG: 9104080045
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE RELIGION WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The Rev. William Sloane Coffin, World War II infantry officer and Korean War-era CIA employee, declared that the Persian Gulf War "was not bloodless, not a triumph, and not over."
In an interview Saturday, Coffin accused President Bush of "gross irresponsibility" in not anticipating the economic and political devastation that would be visited on Iraq by the war.
The president was equally culpable for giving sanctions "a ludicrously short time" to work. The economic sanctions were "not wimpish" and "not appeasement," he said, but gave the world hope for new solutions other than war for international problems.
The United States' delay in coming to the aid of Iraqi refugees - compared to the speed with which it moved to help rebuild the emir's palace in Kuwait - is a telling indication of the administration's misplaced priorities, he said.
There is no denying the war represented "a brilliant military victory," Coffin said, but was ultimately an indecency in that "the rest of the world is not rejoicing as we are."
It was while he served as chaplain of Yale University, between 1957 and 1975, that Coffin developed his reputation for social protest.
He became active in the civil-rights movement and was among the first "freedom riders" who were arrested and jailed in Montgomery, Ala., for protesting racial segregation.
He later was active in the anti-Vietnam War movement and was convicted in 1968, along with Dr. Benjamin Spock and others, of conspiring to aid and abet draft resistance.
In 1977, Coffin, an ordained Presbyterian minister, became senior minister of New York's Riverside Church, where he founded its disarmament program.
He was president until last year of the 170,000-member SANE/FREEZE organization, a coalition pressing for international disarmament, ecological preservation and economic justice.
Coffin sees disarmament as the central issue in the quest for world peace. "The world must be nuclear free, or the world becomes a nuclear porcupine."
Coffin describes the Persian Gulf War as a disaster on several levels. It diverted people's attention from the issue of disarmament, and military success has blinded people to what he foresees as its long-term consequence of political instability.
While his criticism of the nation's policies is direct and vehement, Coffin also passionately declares himself to be a true patriot who is "in love with this country."
He fears, he said, that Americans are "losing their capacity to be angry and therefore are losing their capacity to be compassionate" about issues that should distress them.
"Americans are not very thoughtful these days," Coffin declared. Of course, "it took 100 years to declare Wounded Knee as a massacre," he said, so perhaps it will take some time for Americans to recognize the full impact of what happened in Iraq.
There are other areas where Coffin sees danger looming. "America has become a second-rate economic power" because of its insistence on a huge military budget, he said.
He also believes the nation is "sliding into a class-divided society" with ever-widening distinctions of wealth and power between the haves and have-nots.
"Class is a much harder nut to crack than race," he said, and civil-rights inequities "were easier to fix in 1964" than today.
Coffin spoke twice Sunday at Blacksburg Presbyterian Church.
by CNB