Now that we know this

What do we do? Or: Just in time for Advent, the Archbishop of Canterbury:

In an interview with Muslim lifestyle magazine Emel, reported in The Sunday Times, the head of the Church of England said America's attempts to accumulate influence and control around the world were "not working".

America in Iraq had tried a "short burst of violent action" in an attempt to "clear the decks", he said.

He told Emel magazine: "It is one thing to take over a territory and then pour energy and resources in to administering it and normalising it.

"Rightly or wrongly, that's what the British Empire did - in India, for example.

"It is another thing to go in on the assumption that a quick burst of violent action will somehow clear the decks and that you can move on and other people will put it back together - Iraq, for example."

Of Britain's presence in Iraq, he said: "A lot of the pressure around the invasion of Iraq was 'We've got to do something! Then we'll feel better.' That's very dangerous."

He said the modern Western definition of humanity is "clearly not working very well" and said there is something about Western modernity "which really does eat away at the soul".

Point of clarification: ProfWombat asks:

But who is more representative of, more enabling of, more promoting of a Western definition of humanity than the Archbishop of Canterbury?

Too true. Kind of why I posted this. Can we escape the requirements of institutional position? But can we do without institutions, either?