Slowly backing away from Robertson

August 23, 2005

For reasonable people, this should be an easy one, but for the Bush gang it may have been a tough call — do you blast an ally who happens to be stark raving mad or do you tacitly support a foreign leader you’ve hated for years. In this case, we have TV preacher Pat Robertson in one corner and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez president in the other.

What’s a conservative presidential administration to do? In light of Robertson’s use of the word “assassination,” he apparently got the short end of this stick.

The Bush administration swiftly and unequivocally distanced itself Tuesday from a suggestion by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson that American agents assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a frequent target of U.S. foreign policy.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, appearing at a Pentagon news conference, said when asked: “Our department doesn’t do that kind of thing. It’s against the law. He’s a private citizen. Private citizens say all kinds of things all the time.”

Acknowledging differences with the Caracas government, and saying it should be promoting democracy in the Western Hemisphere, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack called Robertson’s remarks “inappropriate.”

“This is not the policy of the United States government. We do not share his views,” McCormack said in a flat refutation of Robertson’s suggestion that the United States “take out” Chavez to stop Venezuela from becoming a “launching pad for communist influence and Muslim extremism.”

Considering the extraordinary vitriol of Robertson’s attack, some might have expected a slightly stronger disassociation from the administration. If the circumstances were identical, but instead of an American ally of Bush talking about Chavez it was a French ally of Chirac talking about Bush, I suspect the United States would hope for a more forceful response than, “This is not the policy of the French government; we do not share his views.”

But then again, this is Bush’s America — and he has a political base to look out for.

Update: Apparently, some Republican senators had the good sense to express outrage over Robertson’s remarks. Good for them.

The amazing thing to me on this is that the administration actually has to comment on this and acknowledge that Pat Robertson has some connection to the administration and that they know what the comments were.

If this were Jim Wallis (not that he would say it) or another progressive religious figure, would the WH respond and therefore show that they are aware of the comments or would they just say that they have no knowledge of what was suggested and decline to comment? My wager is on the latter.

  • I hate to question the motives of a pair of senators, but I have to wonder if they were a bit more motivated to express outrage by virtue of their being surrounded by Chavez fans at the time. Would their outrage have been so virtuously expressed from the vantage of a podium in Washington, DC?

  • Please note the language used by Coleman to express his outrage: “innapropriate” and “incredibly stupid”. Please don’t let this pass as adequate denunciation. This leaves Coleman miles of wiggle room to claim that he doesn’t disagree with Robertson’s underlying motivation, but just his sense of propriety and judgement.

    What Robertson said clearly makes him a radical fundamentalist advocating violent extremism. We should accept no less of a denunciation than that.

  • Ya I bet they are distancing themselves and probably calling off a couple of black ops off real quickly.
    If Chavez winds up dead, there are going to be a lot of nervous republicans.
    If you have moment, please stop by my slightly stoopid blog.
    pimp fiction

  • He’s a private citizen. Private citizens say all kinds of things all the time.”

    How come Dem’s don’t get to use the same line when it comes to distancing themselves from Michael Moore and Ward Churchill? Neither of those guys ever gave a keynote at our national convention. IOKIYAR, I guess.

    I really hope Dr. Dean uses this quote to help wake up independents to the dangers of the religious right and their stranglehold on the GOP.

  • This “distancing” is pathetic, at best. Consider what the whole damn RightWingNoiseMachine did to Sen. Durbin when he quoted, verbatim, from an FBI investigation of alleged detainee abuse at Guantanimo Bay. Do you see ANYTHING here, so far, that even is in the ball park — hell, the same fucking STATE — as what they did in condemning Durbin? Of course not. And we won’t. Just another form of IOKIYAR.

    When you get the State Department, and Rumsfeld, saying [Robertson] is a private person and can say what he wants, it is just horseshit. Unless and until these Rethugs use the word “condemn” in the same sentence as anything that remotely approaches disagreement with what was said, then it’s just more spinning — i.e., lying by mouthing the words but in fact agreeing with the substance of what Robertson advocated.

    And I had the same question/conclusion as Commenter “impute” (#2) above — Coleman and Martinez were likely more concerned with their own heads & asses rather than in aiming any real criticism at Robertson.

    Finally, the Venezuelan Ambassador to the U.S. held a brief press conference, and denounced Robertson’s comments as fomenting terrorism. And he is dead-on correct. It IS advocating terrorism, in our own hemisphere, against a twice popularly-elected leftist President — who just happens to be (maybe) the mirror opposite of our own Dear Leader.

    And the Ambassador highlighted that Chavez is already scheduled to appear at the United Nations in September when the General Assembly convenes (the same time Clinton is having his huge conference of world leaders), and the Ambassador questions whether Chavez will be safe here. Can you imagine the world’s outrage — and maybe the military consequences — if something “happens” to Chavez in New York or while en route, whether committed by the U.S. or some other opponent seeking to take advantage of the opportunity while letting the U.S. take the blame?

    Isn’t that great: another clusterfuck for these bastards… THIS is a huge problem for the U.S. politically, for motorists (we get 13% of our oil from Venezuela, they pay 12 cents per gallon for gasoline while we pay $3.00), all of Central and South America pissed at us, and that is just for starters. This deserves an immediate and HUGE condemnation from Bush, himself and not through mouthpieces, to keep this from “blowing up” into a U.N. resolution condemning the U.S.

    The good news, I hope, is that ordinary Americans are waking up to the FUBAR being committed in their name by these incompetent and lying bastards.

  • Not murder? You’ve got that wrong.
    NOT be found GUILTY of murder is better:

    Deuteronomy 22:8–

    When you build a new house, make a parapet around your roof so that you may not bring the guilt of bloodshed on your house if someone falls from the roof.

  • Perhaps Pat Robertson has misunderstood the Lord’s Prayer these many years — perhaps Pat thinks Jesus taught… “In the name of the Fatwa, the Son, …”

  • Here’s State Department spokesman Sean McCormack on Robertson:

    “This is not the policy of the United States government. We do not share his views,”
    “I would think that people around the world would take the comments for what they are,” McCormack said. “They are the expression of one citizen.”

    You see… he is just one citizen…
    Just like you and me…

    Except of course:
    He’s controls a television station, and no doubt, has slept in the Lincoln bedroom.

    Other that that though…
    He is just like you and me… one simple citizen.

    And everyone knows: In the USA we do not hold citizens, especially loud mouthed republican citizens, responsible for what they say.

    Right?

  • The latest name on the international terrorist watch list:

    Pat “Osama bin” Robertson

    Shouldn’t he be forbidden from boarding a flight? He’s publicly advocated terrorism against a foreign state. That should count for SOMETHING!

  • I think you’re on to something Drew, perhaps Mr. Robertson should be placed on the terrorist watch list. His comments are no less terroristic
    than many of the things that Osama and his minions espouse all
    along in their videos. I say let’s start a petition. You never know
    what might happen if Robertson gets too close to Chavez……not to mention that his stupid comment actually causes just exactly the OPPOSITE reaction! Now we have to actually listen to Chavez’s drivel and worry that someone might actually try to take the loser out and blame it on US…….sigh.

  • Let’s take that idea farther. Let’s say that one of the fundy nutjobs that worship men like Robertson actually attempts to or succeeds in harming Chavez. Wouldn’t Robertson be held criminally responsible like leaders of white supremecist groups who incite their followers to violence? In fact, his guilt would be easier to prove since he advocated violence against that specific individual rather than a class of people. Isn’t it, or shouldn’t it be a crime to incite the weakminded to violence when you are an undisputed leader of their group? Yes, Robertson should be on a terrorist list, at least, and, if anything happens to Chavez, he should be investigated and crminally tried–or at least vigorously civilly sued–if it turns out that the perpetrator ever even heard of him.

  • What about petitioning ABC? Why is that jackass and his 700 club still on primetime on ABCFamily Channel? This just puts an exclamation point after the reality that there are really neither the interests of “family” or “values” behind Robertson.

    Take a stand: petition ABC to get 700 club off ABC and banish it back to the nether region fringe TV, where it belongs!!!!

  • Dzuban has the right idea.

    Here is why:

    What Robertson is doing is pushing the envelope of acceptable poltical discourse. If he is NOT called on to the carpet for his ghastly utterance, and whipped pink, tomorrow he will be urging the assassination of home grown peaceniks.

    That’s the way it works.

    Either the culture reigns him in, or it doesn’t.

    If it doesn’t, he will amp up the hate….
    I guarantee it.

  • “The Cunning Realist” has a piece on Robertson’s “uneven” views on leaders of foreign lands. This is reporting 101 yet the information isn’t reported to the readership of the mainstream news (print, video or audio).
    BIG media has this information at their fingertips and I guess that where it stays.

  • Fuck them.

    I want to see Roberton reduced to a blubbering, tearful, humiliating refutation of his horrific murderous statements, much as poor Dick Durbin was forced to do just for no more than quoting actual facts from an FBI report!

  • Well, actual assassination is out. But character assassination is still ok, apparently.
    Isn’t it nice to see the GOP embarrassed by their evangelical supporters?
    Bush is going to pay a high price for their backing, eventually. I expect to see and hear more of this kind of talk in the future that will make the
    Republicans cringe.
    Maybe soon Robertson will give his version of the Great Pumpkin Speech
    that will bring more unhappiness for Bush and company.

  • FWIW, the guy sitting in on Glen Beck’s radio show this morning was equating Robertson’s comments to radical muslim clerics issuing fatwas — he said if his listeners weren’t upset by Robertson and Eric Rudolf as “Christian terrorists”, they shouldn’t be upset by radical islamic terrorists. (He then went on to say that Robertson was probably right, but shouldn’t have said what he said given his position..)

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