GriffJon.com Blog

« MediaWiki on Windows/Apache2/PHP, fun problems with it not working | Main | More on American Terrorists »

Christian Assassination Politics?

August 23, 2005 ( politics )

As already reported at ThisModernWorld, our favorite "Christian" Pat Robertson is calling for the assassination of Chavez, and there's a fuller story on CNN.

Roberston:

There was a popular coup that overthrew him [Chavez]. And what did the United States State Department do about it? Virtually nothing. And as a result, within about 48 hours that coup was broken; Chavez was back in power, but we had a chance to move in. He has destroyed the Venezuelan economy, and he's going to make that a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent.

You know, 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. And I don't think any oil shipments will stop. But this man is a terrific danger and the United ... This is in our sphere of influence, so we can't let this happen. We have the Monroe Doctrine, we have other doctrines that we have announced. And without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us very badly. We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.

Things wrong with this statement:

• This is a person who claims to be a Christian arguing for the murder of another human being. Honestly, dude, you're going to hell if there is one.


• Venezuela's a Catholic country, not exactly a hotbed of extremist Muslims. Or Catholics, for that matter.


• True, it's a bit left of the center, politically... but mainly to protect itself from the encroachment of US imperialism. Which, if you look at countries in South America who haven't protected themselves from that, you see why it's a Good Idea


• We actually did do a lot to support the coup. Even during the short coup, there were a lot of rumors around that coup (you might recall, I was in Venezuela for it) that the US had a decently strong role in supporting the coup. Newsweek later revealed that the US Embassy had been made aware beforehand and that the US provided financial and military support to the plotters. We recognized the coup's gov't immediately (which, as it only lasted 3 days, took some effort!). (Read more about the April 11 Coup in Venezuela and the US support of the coup)


• If we're honestly still worried about communism, why don't we take out Castro? Oh right, we tried, and that didn't work too well. Obviously, if South America was on the edge of going commie, I think that it already would have (luckily, the US has been placing puppet dictators throughout to make sure that it's merely an oppressive, anti-democratic area, not commies. Phew! close call!

This guy sickens me. Billmon over at This Modern World has it right:

As far as the political aspects of a remark like this, I think it's high time that the Democratic party borrow a page from the Republican playbook and insist that high-profile conservatives like George Bush, James Dobson, Bill Frist, John McCain, Rick Santorum, Tom DeLay and the like go on record about whether or not they agree with Pat Robertson's call for the killing of Hugo Chavez. Do you agree that Chavez should be assassinated or not? Since you've been so willing to speak for Jesus in the past, do you think he'd support sending someone to murder the democratically elected leader of a foreign country?

Posted by griffjon at August 23, 2005 10:40 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.GriffJon.com/journal/MT/mt-trackback.cgi/80

Comments

Post a comment