Pat Robertson has the right idea, but wrong method
Decision Brief No. 05-D 41 2005-08-24
Center’s Waller lays out alternative strategy for deposing Chavez
(Washington, D.C.): Evangelist Pat Robertson has done a public service by drawing attention to a growing menace in our own hemisphere that the Bush Administration has practically ignored: the consolidating regime of an aggressive dictatorship in oil-rich Venezuela that has allied itself with Iran and Cuba and is sponsoring subversion and violence throughout the region. While Rev. Robertson inadvertently gave Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez exactly what he wanted – the specter of a US plot to assassinate him – as an excuse to ratchet up repression and arm his regime with Russian-built offensive weapons, he has forced the public, the media, and the White House to confront the problem while there is still time to act.
Not since President John F. Kennedy asked the CIA to find ways to kill Cuba’s Fidel Castro has any US president sought to assassinate a Latin American leader. Even so, Castro has milked the assassination threat for four-and-a-half decades to stay in power and spread his brands of violence. Just as the current administration has done nothing significant to remove Castro, it strains the imagination to think it would strike against Chavez.
But here’s something the administration can do, while there is still time: It can atone for its acceptance of Jimmy Carter’s phony certification of the voting processes that Chavez manipulated to stay in power, and ramp up a public diplomacy and political warfare campaign to expose the corrupt Venezuelan regime and its threats against its neighbors. It can help the sharply divided Venezuelan people, including the armed forces, to come together and wage their own pitched political battles against the regime to restore democracy and remove a growing threat that is headed for a terrible human catastrophe. It can help the Venezuelan people lay siege to the fanatical and paranoid Chavez regime and bring it down without need of an assassin’s bullet. Such recommendations are detailed in a recently published paper by the Center’s J. Michael Waller entitled “What to Do About Venezuela.”
Or it can follow its present course set by Jimmy Carter.
Mr. Gaffney is the host of Secure Freedom Radio, a nationally-syndicated radio program heard weeknights throughout the country. He is an associate author of highly acclaimed Shariah: The Threat to America and the publisher of over a dozen other books and monographs from the Center for Security Policy Press.
In April 1987, Mr. Gaffney was nominated by President Reagan to become the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, the senior position in the Defense Department with responsibility for policies involving U.S.-USSR relations, nuclear forces, arms control, missile defense policy and U.S.-European defense ties. He acted in that capacity for seven months during which time, he was the Chairman of the prestigious High Level Group, NATO’s senior politico-military committee. He also represented the Secretary of Defense in key U.S.-Soviet negotiations and ministerial meetings.
From August 1983 until November 1987, Mr. Gaffney was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy under Assistant Secretary Richard Perle.
From February 1981 to August 1983, Mr. Gaffney was a Professional Staff Member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, chaired by the late Senator John Tower (R-Texas). And, in the latter 1970’s, Mr. Gaffney served as an aide to the late Senator Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson (D-Washington) in the areas of defense and foreign policy.
Mr. Gaffney holds a Master of Arts degree in International Studies from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.
Mr. Gaffney’s leadership has been recognized by numerous organizations including: the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Award (1987), the U.S. Business and Industry Council’s Defender of the National Interest Award (1994), the Navy League of the United States’ Alfred Thayer Mahan Literary Achievement Award (1999), and the Zionist Organization of America’s “Louis Brandeis Award” (2003), the Western Conservative Summit’s Stephen H. Long Award (2015), the Council for National Policy’s George Washington Military Leadership Award (2016) and the IMPACT Award from Ginni Thomas and United in Purpose (2017).
Mr. Gaffney was born in 1953 and resides in the Washington, D.C. area.
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