Think Progress’ Jon Sherman had a good item yesterday, noting that Liberian dictator and war criminal Charles Taylor maintains his brutal reign with the help of powerful friends, including TV preacher Pat Robertson. Sherman found it odd that Robertson would sign on to an anti-poverty campaign for the developing world while simultaneously defending a thug like Taylor.
Taylor, who was forced to get out of town as violence engulfed the Liberian capital, is now under guard in Nigeria and still reportedly causing trouble. He is wanted for war crimes in Liberia and Sierra Leone, where he contributed to the “deaths, rape, abduction and mutilation of thousands of civilians.” As a result of the civil war Taylor fueled, Sierra Leone was still ranked dead last in the 2004 UN Development Programme Human Development Index. Human Rights Watch continues to urge President Obasanjo to extradite Taylor to the Special Court for Sierra Leone.
How could Robertson defend a war criminal like Charles Taylor who has blocked peace and development in two countries and claim to be for eradicating extreme poverty?
Actually, there’s a perfectly logical explanation for all of this. Taylor may be a war criminal, a vicious tyrant, and a man with connections to Al Queda, but that didn’t stop the founder of the Christian Coalition from making him a business partner in 1999.
Despite his talk about Christianity and morality, Robertson joined forces with Taylor to make a bundle in gold mining in the West African country. In 1999, the TV preacher reached a deal with Taylor that allows a Robertson-owned company, Freedom Gold Ltd., to mine for gold in the Bukon Jedeh region of Liberia. The company, which lists Robertson as its president and sole director, was reportedly formed offshore in the Cayman Islands in December 1998.
One has to wonder what would possess someone who claims to be a moral religious leader to enter into a business arrangement with someone like Taylor. I guess it comes down to one thing: unfettered greed.
As GQ reported in an expose on the Robertson-Taylor connection a couple of years ago, “[I]t seems clear that in his lust to tap the lucre of the West African Craton [gold seam], the Reverend Pat Robertson has crossed a moral line in order to go into business with a torturer, a murderer, a barbarian who has supported thugs who lop off the arms of defenseless women and children.”
And what takes this story from merely outrageous to truly over the top is Robertson’s constant efforts to defend Taylor, despite his record of brutality and connections with Al Queda.
A couple of years ago, Robertson started complaining that his friends in the Bush administration were trying to “destabilize Liberia” by targeting its vicious dictator. In July 2003, Robertson told his 700 Club audience:
“So we’re undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels to take over the country. And how dare the president of the United States say to the duly elected president of another country, ‘You’ve got to step down.'”
(Just as an aside, Taylor wasn’t “duly elected”; He seized control of the country with bands of armed thugs in 1989 by slaughtering his way to power. Taylor held an “election” in 1997, which international observers viewed as a fraudulent charade.)
Robertson continues to keep it up. As Sherman noted, Robertson continues to use his TV show to extol Taylor’s virtues as a “fellow Baptist” and “a fine Christian.”
In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Robertson, who has never been to Liberia and has never met Taylor, said Taylor’s indictment ‘is nonsense and should be quashed.’…Taylor ‘definitely has Christian sentiments, although you hear all these rumors that he’s done this and that,’ Robertson said.
This or that? Rumors? Taylor has killed and tortured thousands. He has committed horrific atrocities against his own people. His country has delved into a bloody civil war, which he helped to instigate.
I’ve always known Robertson was a wretched human being, but supporting a murderer like Taylor may be among the worst things Robertson has ever done. It’s at least in his Top 3.