Observations

Pat’s Flapdoodle

by The Windjammer

Everybody I listen to on a somewhat irregular basis on the idiotbox which some call television has had something to say, mostly derogatory, about Pat Robertson’s remarks regarding the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, who is a bit of a left winger hisownself..

As irrational as Pat sounded to some people, he was being entirely rational. I listened to the excerpts, as many as I could, and I interpreted his statements in a bit different light. I thought he was taking a stab at being funny and chose the wrong topic. It wasn’t exactly what us old-timers would call a kneeslapper, but he surely could not have been all that serious. I thought I detected a slight twitch of his lips as he said it.

The bigger problem is the treatment the remarks received from a left-handed press. Pat has been raked up and down and sideways for his remarks. If George Soros had run abreast of a streak of humor somewhere in his makeup and made the same statements, I suspect they would have gone almost unnoticed in the "free" press.

Almost anyone can laugh at a bit of raw humor unless he is the butt of the joke. That puts the shoe on the other mule, so to speak.

I’m old enough to recall when a former president of these dis-United States was alleged to have planned to assassinate a thorn in our side, Fidel Castro. That was just a short time after we had lent Fidel our support in his attempt (successful, I think) to overthrow another dictator. The big problem with Fidel turned out to be his infidelity. He cozied up to the Communists in Russia (another place where dictators were the new fashion rage) instead of to the neighbor just off his northern shore. P.S. There ain’t no need for you to run to the dictionary to look for "cozied." That word is one that some of my older-than-peers used when I was a boy and Webster never heard us talk.

That aborted attempt turned out to be disastrous. Of course that is a matter of opinion for some folks. I don’t believe that Castro hired Lee Harvey Oswald to do in JFK. I believe every word of the Warren report and I have never read it. That bit of tit for tat just goes to prove that the U.S. Senate is not the only bunch of Good Ol’ Boys in the world.

It is poor policy to go around telling every Jake, Jane and John that you want to do away with some guy who rubs you the wrong way, whether he is a leader in his own bailiwick or just one of the gofers.

The Third George tried to set Pat straight by saying that it is not the policy of this administration, never mind its forebears, to go around shooting presidents or dictators with a two-miler fifty caliber from behind a bunch of thick bushes. The Defense and State Departments echoed his sentiments and disavowed any connection by a former also-ran and the policies of the present administration. Rightly so. The press has added those remarks to their versions almost as an afterthought.

The part of Pat’s statement which impressed me was the economical aspect. I suspect that there are several people who would rather see a tyrant receive his euthanasia from one hidden sniper than to see a whole army placed in harm’s way in order to topple a regime. That surely must be a less expensive way.

The problem there is that regimes, dictatorial or otherwise, are usually a bit more than knee deep. When the kingpin is gone, there are at least three others trying to fit into the same slot. The substitutes, in many cases in my memory, were just as bad or worse than the originals.

There has been no concentrated official effort in the last 12 years to assassinate Usama. That ought to tell us something about the policy of the makers. There have been some minor efforts. I suspect that time will eventually take care of him, but it won’t stop the terrorists in the near future, even if he runs out of both time and money.

There are more dictatorial tyrants around the world than you can shake an olive branch at, but methodical assassination is not the right path.

Even if Pat Robertson did say so.

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