Hey, George... Read the sign and step aside!
;o)
Great find.
Wasn't it that p*ssy Gerald Ford who outlawed assassinations of foreign "leaders" like Saddam?
From a pragmatic stand point, it's not a good idea to say things like that, but really, in both cases, the actual idea isn't the worst in the world.
Owl_Eagle
(If what I just wrote makes you sad or angry,
Well, as long as we are tarring all Christian's with Pat Robertson's remarks, I guess we can start tarring all Clinton-admin-mediazoids for Steffy's pro-assassination commentary. Right?
This is SO wrong!
"The Powerful", as a rule, generally are only concerned with themselves and thier power. Attacks against the innocent actually provide them with a platform where there can appear to be compassionate and caring, but, the only real effect is an INCREASE in thier power.
Terrorists kill the innocent to instill distrust among them! Based on the distrust of "The Powerful", and all thier attempts to control terrorism (mostly by implementing draconian policies among the innocent!) - the innocent are expected to one day demand that "The Powerful" give in to the terrorist in exchange for security.
take for example the Patriot Act. Many here decry that these measures were implemented, but few if any see that the implementation of such measures is EXACTLY what the terrorists wanted to achieve! The existance of these measures, and a later demonstration that they are inneffective in the WoT will cause widespread disillusionment with the Government and ever increasing demands to "Bring the troops home", etc...
This is the real goal of terrorism!
AND, for a really interesting twist, compare what I have said above to the tactics of the left from the 60's through to today...
Am I supposed to be outraged because Bush tried to "take out" Saddam on the first day of the Iraq War, during "shock and awe"?
I can't figure out why Rummy was saying "that's illegal, we don't do those things", in response to Robertson's suggestion.
Hilary's peps are going to be very unhappy with anyone who keeps repeating this in the MSM.
The point is that Patterson is supposed to be a religious figure. Casually talking about rubbing problematic people out is better suited to gangsters and not someone who wants credibility as a religious leader.
He dropped the ball on this and made conservative christians (and social conservatives on balance) look bad.
Funny that the give-peace-a-chance liberals would be first in line to promote assassination, the draft, torture. Remember when the Dems came out in favor of the draft recently? Its not that far back that some Dems were suggesting that torture might be justifiable.
What makes the difference is who is wielding the cat-o-nine-tails. If a sparrow falls to earth during a Republican Administration, we already know that Republican fat-cats conspired to make it so. But people can drop like flies around a Democratic president, federal agents can incinerate women and children, and Democrat journalists will fall all over themselves reporting scandal sheet nonsense while what actually happened, what these people actually did, what they actually stand for, all gets flushed right down the memory hole.
Even in wartime, assassination is tricky. The decision to shoot down Yamamoto's airplane, when his itinerary was discovered through breaking the Japanese code, was approved by President Roosevelt. No one at a lower level was willing to make the decision. They all bucked it higher.
However, assassination in peacetime is a lot more tricky. What happens if the plot is discovered before the attempt is made? What happens if the attempt is successful but the plot is broken afterwards? The nation whose leader was assassinated might well take it as an act of war, precipitating the war the assassination was supposed to prevent.
It's worth noting that Hitler survived at least five and maybe more attempted assassinations. All but two were either discovered ahead of time, or aborted because the assassins found Hitler was too well guarded. The two attempts that were actually carried out (the Beer Hall Bomb and the Generals' Bomb) failed for various reasons. Hitler is probably the purest example of what in retrospect would appear to be a justifiable assassination, yet the difficulty of carrying it out provides a useful lesson.
Another lesson is that of the successful assassination of Reinhardt Heydrich by a group of Czech commandos. He was replaced by someone who was even worse, and several thousand people were executed or (in the case of Jews) "sent East" as a result of the successfull assassination. The village of Lidice was wiped out completely, and everyone in it executed.
All these things need to be taken into account when someone talks glibly of assassinating a foreign leader.