In Richard Kim’s In Defense of Pat Robertson in the current issue of The Nation, he points out:
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.
Instead of taking on the question of assassination directly–and assassination’s dark twin in extralegal violence, torture–the whole incident became an opportunity to paint Robertson as powerless and crazed, with illegal assassinations and covert ops depicted as nothing more than the deranged fantasies of an extremist snake-oil salesman. But in this instance, Robertson is no radical dreamer; his prescription is consistent with a long and documented record of covert US intervention in Latin America, and falls within the mainstream of public opinion on such matters. During the build-up to the Iraq War, half of all Americans supported the assassination of Saddam Hussein, and wherever you fall in that divide, Robertson is right about one thing–it sure would have cost less than $200 billion! Could nobody on the editorial board of the Times and Post recall CIA plots to assassinate Castro? Or CIA collusion in the overthrow of Salvadore Allende? Or how about the late, lamented Gary Webb, and his reports for the San Jose Mercury News that linked the CIA to a Contra-crack cocaine scheme? Wacky! Outlandish! Downright loopy! Sometimes, fact is stranger than both fiction and Pat Robertson.
Pat Robertson overstepped the bounds of decency by advocating the murder of another human being. He advocated the assassination of a foreign head of state, and Hugo Chavez has no history of committing atrocities or invading his neighbors. There is no obvious rationale, like human rights, other than serving our corporate interests. But when has that ever stopped us before?
