The easiest thing to call Pat Robertson (and Jerry Falwell — the two are basically the same person-mass, so I’ll tend to confuse them in my mind) at this point in time is “Mullah Robertson”. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say he’s thrown out a Fatwa on Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and now Venezuela President Hugo Chavez.

I want to unpack his quote on Hugo Chavez just a wee bit.

ROBERTSON: There was a popular coup that overthrew him [Chavez]. And what did the United States State Department do about it? Virtually nothing. And as a result, within about 48 hours that coup was broken; Chavez was back in power, but we had a chance to move in.

This is a lie. There wasn’t a popular coup to overthrow Chavez. There was a coup-attempt from his political opposition, backed by the weight of the US government. It was here that Hugo Chavez started to get a bit paranoid about the United States government, seeing Bush attempting to overthrow him at every corner — a very understandable feeling, actually. He has since been re-elected by a large margin. (Incidentally, Hugo Chavez tried to coup his way into power years before he became president. He failed, but went on to gain power through an election.)

He has destroyed the Venezuelan economy

Perhaps. But, for most Venezuelans, it was broken before he came to power. The poor masses voted him in. The general left-wing assessment of Latin America is of a batch of post-globalization governments, accumulating a block of anti-corporate governments. Lulu is supposed to be the tops. Chavez is supposed to be a bit troubling in terms of some of the things he’s doing.

, and he’s going to make that a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent.

Wow. We’ve been facing Islamo-Facism. Now we have to deal with Islamo-Commies? And the Islamo-Commies are hiding out in South America??? I have an idea! Let’s get the Islamo-Facists to fight the Islamo-Commies! They can kill their way into oblivion, and we’ll just swoop in at the end and take the oil that’s left.

You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war.

Please note the assumption that we oughta start a war. Consult the National Review issue with a cover with Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro and the words “Axis of Evil Latin American Edition!” In the craps game to figure out “who will be next” on the list to war with (You know the one … is it Iran or Syria or…), Venezuela was always a sort of dark-horse waiting in the wings. (And the agit-prop was always there). The question: What did Hugo Chavez do to us other than successfully foil our coup?

And I don’t think any oil shipments will stop. But this man is a terrific danger and the United … This is in our sphere of influence, so we can’t let this happen. We have the Monroe Doctrine, we have other doctrines that we have announced. And without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us very badly.

Well… Monroe Doctrine… Oil… Imperialism writ large, ain’t it?

We have the ability to take him out, 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.

So, the news polls oughta start asking this question:

What should our policy toward Venezuela be?
(a) War
(b) Covert operations to assassinate Hugo Chavaez.

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