In Defense of Pat Robertson

[steve2470]

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050912/kim

Richard Kim

Ladies and gentlemen, though it pains me to do so, I rise in defense of Pat Robertson. Pat's been taking a lot of heat lately for saying on The 700 Club that the US government should assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. "I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war," Robertson mused on an August 22 broadcast. And then, with unanimous contempt, the establishment press whipped out their razor blades.

"Wacky," the Chicago Tribune exclaimed in an editorial christening him "the new Terminator." The LA Times pronounced Robertson "notorious for remarks of questionable sense or even sanity." "Unchristian" and "outlandish," declared the Houston Chronicle. "Just a garden-variety crackpot with friends in high places," the New York Times dissed. The Miami Herald opined that Pat's "gangster rhetoric has no place in a public forum" and that his views "do not reflect US policy at any level." But it was the folks at the Washington Post who got into a real swivet. "We won't even pretend to have given television evangelist Pat Robertson's latest obnoxious utterance much thought," they began before doing exactly that for the next 500 words: "Witless," "an act of stupidity only he could outdo," "ill-advised," "moronic," "callow" and "downright loopy," they bitched. "We would have preferred to allow the Christian Coalition's founder to continue his slide from America's mainstream into the obscurity he has so richly earned." Even Pat's friends like the World Evangelical Alliance and right-wing radio host G. Gordon Liddy repudiated him.

What's all the fuss about? In my estimation, Robertson's done us all a service in at least two regards. First, if there is a US plot to assassinate Chavez--as Chavez has long maintained--Robertson's unwittingly scuttled it for the time being. "Our department doesn't do that kind of thing," Donald Rumsfeld insisted, noting that political assassinations are "against the law." Now, legality hasn't exactly been much of a barrier for this administration, but I'd like to think even the spooks at Langley are smart enough to realize that any "accidents" that might befall Chavez would be "untimely," to say the least.



But more importantly, the gaffer's coughed up a breath of fresh air on a wartime media disturbingly oblivious to US atrocities, and he should be commended at least for his honesty. Don't get me wrong. I oppose any US attempt to assassinate Hugo Chavez or to destabilize his government (as he alleges the United States did during the 2002 military coup), and I oppose political assassinations generally. But the press ducked the questions of political assassinations and covert operations that Robertson so brazenly put forward. The Houston Chronicle came the closest to a condemnation, but hedged their bets, saying, "No war is imminent between the United States and Venezuela, so there is no need for the illegal alternative of assassination." But what if a war were imminent? Between Venezuela and the United States--or, say, with Iran or Syria? Would those editorial pages endorse a "take-out" of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's new hardline president?

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[knowbody0]

1. i believe pat is george's religous counselor

and that they chat it up daily. also that pat and george are heavily invested in the companies Chavez issued tax warants on.

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2. blasphemy is a sin

can't defend Pat sorry