Pat Robertson, licensed to kill
Imagine the United States response if a Muslim from the Middle East made the same threat against the President of the United States. Pat Robertson (quoted in The Washington Post today:
We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability," Robertson said Monday on his Christian Broadcasting Network. "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.
Hey that's funny! I mean, not funny funny - just funny. Maybe Pat Robertson should have been running the Bush administration's Iraq policy. I mean, it was just one guy, right? And it would have saved us $200 billion.
Oh? What's that you say? The insurgency filled the void left after Saddam Hussein was deposed due to poor planning by the Pentagon and the Bush administration? There's every possibility that by cutting off the head of the Baath Party, and not planning for the aftermath, the United States could lose the war in Iraq?
Actually, fans of Hugo Chavez (and I'm not stating my opinion here) should be dancing in the streets right now. Imagine if something actually happened to Chavez? Imagine how easy it would be for Chavez now to consolidate his power by just staging an attempted coup?
Good job Pat. Next stop, the United Nations.
posted by Schroeder @ 11:07 PM
11 comments
11 Comments:
I think Pat ought to pick up a bible and try reading it sometime.
Mixter
I have never understood why anyone gives this guy any air time (Hannity) or prints any thing he says.
But as for your comment about Muslims making comments like these, haven't they been doing that regularly for quite some time now?
And the difference is Pat Robertson is being widely condemned for his comments, even among conservatives.
[I'm doing my best to ignore your gratuitous comment regarding the current administration, I don't think you can help yourself]
mixter: The bible? I'm sure he thinks he doesn't have to read it to know the truth, just like our illustrious president doesn't have to read to inform himself. They both believe that through prayer and divine intervention that they will always say the right things and make the right decisions.
Gnat:
1) Name a *credible* threat against a U.S. president made by a Muslim that went unanswered. Please, enlighten me.
2) Sadly, any threat to assassinate a foreign leader originating in the United States must be taken as a potentially serious and credible threat. The United States has a long history of supporting coups and assasinations to get regimes that U.S. elites prefer. That's why Pat Robertson's remark is so incredibly reprehensible - precisely because it exposes the history of hypocrisy that our leaders should now be trying to reverse.
Where the United States goes, others will follow. That's the danger.
How could anyone disagree?
"Gratuitous?"
Search that gnat brain for a recollection of the Bush administration's earliest public statements on Iraq - that's right, "regime change." But they weren't talking peaceful regime change were they? They wanted Saddam dead or alive. We now know, of course, that the Bush administration *never* considered the reality that such a change would produce.
How is drawing attention to that very grave blunder "gratuitous?"
I could be wrong, having just a gnat's brain and all, but I seem to recall one Bill Clinton talking about regime change in Iraq (or was it someone by the name of John Kerry while Clinton was President) as well. If I'm wrong, I apologize, it gets hard to keep track with all the changes in positions over the years (and sometimes in the same sentence).
I meant gratuitous in that your basic post was about Mr. Robertson and his ill-advised comments and you managed to throw in a critique of Bush. I mean, Robertson doesn't speak for Bush or anyone else in the administration. As far as I know, and I am always happy to be corrected by you so have at it if I'm wrong, Robertson is just a private individual with an agenda, not unlike millions of others (of all political and theological bents). Frankly, I'm not even sure why his rantings are big enough news to deserve a post on this illustrious site, but since they did, I just thought the bashing of the President in the same post was a gratuitous addition.
Are you calling Roberson's comments a "credible" threat?
Just wondering.
There is a decided difference between regime change by force, and regime change by other means.
Which was the smarter policy to pursue? A policy of boxing in Saddam Hussein (Clinton) and taking the time required to isolate him, with the possibility of peaceful regime change? Or (Bush) going in and getting over 1800 Americans killed, over 13,000 Americans injured, tens of thousands of Iraqis, and no real hope that it will ever end?
What about the way it was done in the first place - eliminating ALL Baathists? That's when the security situation went to crap because 150,000 U.S. troops couldn't hold the country together.
Of course Pat Robertson's threat isn't credible (in my book) - but the Bush's administration is the most right-wing, Christian-patronizing administration in U.S. history. Who knows who Bush listens to - certainly no one who has any good advice that he's willing to accept.
Where's YOUR credible threat from a Muslim gnat?
Clinton's policy didn't do anything except allow the French and Russians to make large profits dealing with Iraq in contravention of U.N. mandates and to allow Kofi Annan and his relatives, as well as others, to make huge personal profits in the Oil for Food scandal.
And I'm not so sure that Clinton, or was it Kerry?, wasn't calling for regime change by military force at some point, maybe in 1998. Clinton, or was it Gore, or Kerry again, clearly said that we know that Saddam has the weapons of mass destruction.
Anyway, there is no need for me to list a "credible" parallel to Roberston's statements (although I'm sure they exist) as the true parallel to Robertson's statement is a not credible threat and there are any number of them. Robertson is no more credible than the anonymous mobs in the middle east burning U.S. flags and pictures of Bush, etc.
"Clinton's policy didn't do anything"
Oh yeah, Bill Clinton is the root of all our problems.
So, which is it - either Clinton did nothing at all, and Saddam was free to do as he pleased, or Clinton worked toward regime change?
The Bush administration failure to achieve the success it promised to the American people within a miracle of weeks was predicated upon the same sorts of irresponsible claims and policy choices that Pat Robertson argues. There is absolutely nothing gratuitous in equating stupidity with stupidity.
As I thought, nothing substantial to support your views.
Saddam provides yet another fine example of how previous U.S. attempts to bolster the interests of elites through undemocratic processes has devastating results for the citizens of those countries, causing profound animosity toward the U.S., and even blowback. Ah, but that's an argument elsewhere in PGR that you couldn't finish.
Read on, if you dare...
"In 1959, there was a failed assassination attempt on Qasim. The failed assassin was none other than a young Saddam Hussein. In 1963, a CIA-organized coup did successfully assassinate Qasim, and Saddam's Ba'ath Party came to power for the first time. Saddam returned from exile in Egypt and took up a key post in the new regime. He was in charge of Iraq's secret service. The CIA then provided this new pliant, Iraqi regime with a nice gift. It supplied them with the names of thousands of communists, and other leftist activists and organizers. Thousands of these supporters of Qasim and his policies were soon dead in a rampage of mass murder carried out by the CIA's close friends in Iraq. (Providing such 'assassination lists' to newly empowered military regimes is standard practice for the CIA. They did it again just a few years later in Indonesia when general Suharto came to power. Those CIA lists got Suharto's regime off to an explosive start. Estimates are that between 1 and 1.5 million Indonesians were killed within a year, thus eliminating the world's third largest communist party.)
"Nowadays, Iraq is once again a target of US 'regime change.' Despite that, precious little is being said by the corporate media about how the CIA aided and abetted political assassination, regime change and mass murder in order to put Saddam's Ba'ath power into power for the first time in Iraq.
Richard Helms: CIA Assassination, Regime Change, Mass Murder and Saddam
By Richard Sanders
Search that gnat brain for a recollection of the Bush administration's earliest public statements on Iraq - that's right, "regime change." But they weren't talking peaceful regime change were they? They wanted Saddam dead or alive. We now know, of course, that the Bush administration *never* considered the reality that such a change would produce.
Your source?
By the way, by this: "As I thought, nothing substantial to support your views," I assume you are referring to your unanswered question, "1) Name a *credible* threat against a U.S. president made by a Muslim that went unanswered. Please, enlighten me." As I said though I was just responding to your post itself which contemplated "the United States response if a Muslim from the Middle East made the same threat against the President of the United States.
So, when I said "But as for your comment about Muslims making comments like these, haven't they been doing that regularly for quite some time now?" I meant equivalents to Pat Robertson, which would be the only meaningful comparison, since Robertson was the one that issued the threat. Surely, even you would agree with that?
Given that background, your request that I name a "credible" threat from a Muslim is irrelevant to the context and your insult is merely one of your gratuitous attacks, directed at me this time.
That's the best I can do with my gnat's brain.
By the way, if your post was intended to express some outrage over Pat Robertson's comments, I would agree they are outrageous, but as I perhaps didn't make clear in my first comment in this thread, I find it even more outrageous that anyone even prints or broadcasts what that clown says in the first place.
Oh Schroeder, I love it when you're right! ::swoon::
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