Joseph Sobran’s
Washington Watch

Day of the Jackass

(Reprinted from the issue of September 1, 2005)

Speaking on his own television program The 700 Club, televangelist Pat Robertson suggested a way to deal with Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez: assassinate him. “We have the ability to take him out,” Robertson mused, “and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability.”

“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.”

He could hardly have done Chavez a bigger favor. Chavez likes to claim he’s the target of U.S. assassination attempts. His friend and hero Fidel Castro, in the early 1960s, survived as many as eight such efforts; among the intended instruments of death were a poisoned cigar and Castro’s own beard.

These and other operations, some of them successful, have made the CIA notorious all over the world. That’s what made Robertson’s comments so explosive — and hugely embarrassing to the Bush administration. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld immediately disavowed them — “Our department doesn’t do that sort of thing.... [It’s] against the law” — and a State Department spokesman added, “This is not the policy of the United States government.”

But it has been, often enough to make such denials necessary. President Kennedy, an early James Bond fan, was so intent on rubbing out Castro by covert methods that his brother Robert could never shake the suspicion that his murder in Dallas had been an act of reprisal. At age 79, by the way, Castro has now been in power longer than any other ruler in the world.

Robertson expresses not only a perduring American faith in violence, but a very peculiar attitude for a Christian preacher. He might as well point out that a timely operation against Pontius Pilate could have prevented the crucifixion. In fact, St. Peter did try to prevent it by drawing his sword against the Roman officers, and our Lord Himself said He could have summoned legions of angels to His rescue, had He chosen.

Robertson also admires the Israeli approach, an open and official policy of targeted assassinations against suspected terrorists. “Terrorism” — the word that now warrants any means thought necessary to oppose it — was one of the chief evils he accused Chavez of nurturing.

Though Rumsfeld stressed that Robertson is a private citizen, he held a press conference to make the separation as clear as possible.

The administration can’t afford to allow the impression, among its “religious right” base or anyone else, that this outburst manifests its own secret desires — just as Chavez likes to claim.

Conservatives are proudly skeptical of government agencies in general, but that skepticism often disappears when it comes to the military and the CIA, whose success records are no more glorious than those of the welfare state. Big government can be trusted, it seems, as long as it’s shooting and bombing.

In the excellent 1972 movie The Day of the Jackal, a group of right-wing French army officers hires a professional hitman to kill President Charles de Gaulle, who they think has betrayed France in Algeria. We watch the cunning, methodical killer execute every step of his nearly flawless plan. Whether he succeeds or fails, after this job he knows he can never work again. And we watch in fascination as he comes within a millimeter of succeeding. But at the end of the story, he is dead and de Gaulle is alive.

Setting ethical questions aside, violence usually backfires. Living by the sword has practical as well as moral hazards. Why is this so hard for some conservatives to learn?
 
Finishing the Job

This has been a bitter summer for President Bush. The Iraq war is going badly; there is no prospect of victory; his approval ratings have plunged below 40% as the public’s doubts deepen; and he has rather gotten the worst of a long media duel with a dead soldier’s angry mother.

Neither a subtle plan nor bold, decisive action can solve the problem, and “staying the course” means only persisting in the mistakes that have caused and worsened it.

During last fall’s presidential debates, I thought John Kerry scored his most telling points when he appealed to Bush’s father’s conduct of the first Iraq war. Ever since 1991, the neoconservatives who admire Bush the son have censured the elder Bush for failing to “finish the job” by going all out for “regime change” in Iraq.

In his memoirs, the elder Bush explained his preference for containment over conquest. An attempt to conquer Iraq might have deposed Saddam Hussein, all right, but it would have entailed a long and costly occupation, with a bitterly hostile population and endless guerrilla warfare.

The elder Bush was unconsciously predicting his son’s predicament today. It has become more and more evident that the job isn’t, and can’t be, “finished.” Instead, the original errors can be, and are being, compounded. But even yesterday’s official optimism has been markedly toned down lately.

Neoconservatives persist in ascribing opposition to the war to Democrats, “liberals,” and “the left,” who are easy to caricature; but, except for a few swipes at “isolationists on the right,” they deliberately ignore others (such as Popes) who oppose the war for other reasons.

Pretending the debate can be reduced to two obviously partisan “sides” oversimplifies the issues and leaves no room for independent reflection.

To hear Rush Limbaugh tell it, you’d think anyone who favors ending the war today must want Hillary Clinton to win in 2008. Why else?

But a powerful case against George Walker Bush’s conduct of the war was made years in advance by another Republican, a man whose patriotism nobody questions: George Herbert Walker Bush. Sons should listen to their fathers.
 
Encouraging Word

Our old friend Paul Weyrich is now at home, recovering from his recent double amputation. If he can avoid infection in the next few weeks, he says, he soon expects to be “back in the fray.”

God bless his brave spirit.


SOBRAN’S watches a recent movie about a potty British housewife who performs abortions — not for money, but out of the goodness of her heart. If you have not seen my monthly newsletter yet, give my office a call at 800-513-5053 and request a free sample, or better yet, subscribe for two years for just $85. New subscribers get two gifts with their subscription. More details can be found at the Subscription page of my website.

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Joseph Sobran