Another Fatwa

On Monday, a fanatical religious leader issued an opinion that the elected leader of a country in the Western Hemisphere should be assassinated, to avoid another long and costly war. We have become used to such religious opinions or "fatwas" by radical Islamic leaders, venting their hate of US foreign policy by advocating murder. The difference with Monday's opinion is that it came from Pat Robertson, the founder of the Christian Coalition, and host of "The 700 Club," not to mention a former US presidential candidate.

Robertson stated flatly that the President of oil rich Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, was making his country "a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent." Apparently, communism and Muslim extremism are now virtually synonymous (I guess we'll see Kim Jong Il of North Korea building mosques and opening madrasas in Pyongyang soon). Robertson reasoned that since Chavez has said some rather nasty things about the United States, we should "take him out" to avoid a long and costly war. News flash, Pat: the Pentagon isn't exactly mobilizing to invade Venezuela at the moment...

Maybe Robertson is feeling the bite at the pump when he fills up his Cadillac, and wants to ensure that Venezuela, which supplies 10% of US oil imports, keeps the spigot wide open. Of course, with typical myopia, he fails to consider that while the US imports 10% of its oil from Venezuela, we account for 59% of Venezuela's oil exports. Cutting us off would be a pyrrhic victory of monumental proportions for Chavez.

It would also seem that Mr. Robertson has not paid much attention to the history of attempted political assassinations by the United States. We did try to "take out" President Chavez's friend, Fidel Castro, in the 1960s, and the bearded one is alive and well and living in Havana. The failure, and attendant embarrassment, of that plot ultimately led to the policy now in place against the assassination of foreign political leaders (not to mention that during the Cold War, we didn't exactly want the Soviet Union bankrolling hit squads to take out the US President or leaders of our European allies).

Similarly, Mr. Robertson appears to have missed the 6th Commandment. Of course, the exact meaning of "thou shalt not kill" has been debated. Is it an absolute injunction? There is no penalty specified if this commandment is broken. On the other hand, we read in Ecclesiastes that there is "a time to kill and a time to heal." One must presume that the Old Testament saw killing as a necessary human activity, as long as you didn't kill the wrong people, or somebody who didn't deserve to die. The treatment of the Canaanites by the Israelites makes this abundantly clear.

Perhaps Mr. Robertson is converting to Judaism. If he were, it would at least explain his adherence to the Old Testament views on killing. Chavez is a bad man, and certainly not one of God's Chosen People (at least according to Robertson), so it must be acceptable to assassinate him. Yes, it all makes sense now! Mr. Robertson will, no doubt, be joining the protests at Israeli settlements in the West Bank against the withdrawal from Palestinian territories. Perhaps he will move there permanently. That would be welcome news for America.

On the other hand, he did found the CHRISTIAN Coalition. This might be a bit of a leap, but one might expect such a man to espouse a Christian outlook. Perhaps there are some parts of the New Testament that Mr. Robertson has discovered that the rest of us haven't read yet, but I don't remember many instances of Jesus telling the disciples to "lock and load" and waste the Romans. Let's see... "love one another" (nope, not there)..."Peter, put your sword back in its place" (nope, that won't work either). There isn't really much to support political assassination in the Gospels, even with the most creative reading.

Clearly, lots of killing has taken place in the name of Christianity. This is rather astounding in light of the message of love that Christ himself brought. However, human nature being what it is, a perversion of this message was inevitable. The hope is that Christianity has largely worked through this 'adolescence,' and that we Christians might actually consider the teachings of Jesus, rather than how scripture might be spun to support this or that political goal.

Finally, Mr. Robertson would do well to consider that the United States has a long (and perhaps today endangered) history of the separation of church and state. Advocating the assassination of a foreign leader by agents of the US government in the context of a "religious" television show with many thousands, if not millions, of viewers is a colossal act of irresponsibility at best. I certainly hope that this blunder exposes the true nature of Robertson to his viewers.

At least he's not our President. If he were, he might have arbitrarily invaded a country, citing unsubstantiated charges of WMD development before UN inspections could verify those same allegations, made on shaky, conclusion-selective intelligence. Hm. Wait a minute...

-PMOS