When Pat Robertson, the Religious Right leader who sometimes makes me wince when he speaks for so many Christians, said on TV the other day that Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela, should be assassinated because of his anti-American ideology, I winced to such an extent my face got stuck that way.
He basically justifies the assassination by saying it would be cheaper to assassinate him now before he becomes a US threat (and obviously he would be because he criticizes President Bush, in which case I am a potential threat to national security because I have also criticized the President) than to wait until Venezuela becomes a launching pad of communism and Muslim extremists and costing us another $200 billion in war costs.
There is the breaking point of the preemptive strike that led us into Iraq. According to the pre-emptive clause we could assassinate somebody else before they even come into power and we would feel ourselves justified. The idea is not only morally corrupt, but it is not freedom, merely paranoid schitzophrenia.
When Bonhoeffer was trying to figure out if God would endorse the assassination of Hitler, he had his own personal war within his heart. He always believed that violence would not be the answer, but the consequences of Hitler dying before his height of power are far from negative. Millions would be saved. But even then the decision was not obvious for Bonhoeffer. It really was personal distress to come to the realities of war.
I do not see the same struggle in Mr. Robertson. In fact, he is willing to take one life because of the financial burden it would become to do it later. What kind of unbiblical, un-Christlike comments are those? Please Mr. Robertson, What Would Jesus Do?
I still have to believe in transformation. Not only for the sake of this planet, but for my wincing face as well.
