Freedom Writer - September 1995

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Friends of Pat

When Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition holds its September convention 
in Washington, Republican Party luminaries from Bob Dole to Newt Gingrich 
to Phil Gramm will be on hand to pledge their devotion to Mr. Robertson's 
famous cracked causes —tamping out family planning, gay-bashing, preventing 
the military takeover of southern Virginia by the United Nations, 
and so on. The Republicans will hope to get a little in return, electorally 
and otherwise. 

One of them should, but probably won't, ask Mr. Robertson about what 
may be his wackiest hobby horse of all, his lobbying activities on 
behalf of the president of Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko, one of the worst 
human beings ever to walk the planet. In his 30 years of plunder and 
savagery, Mr. Mobutu has killed tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands 
of Zairians who opposed his monumentally corrupt rule. His huge Central 
African nation was rich in mineral wealth when the Belgians pulled 
out at the end of the colonial era, but now the infrastructure is 
in ruins, most of the mines are shut down, and the tens of billions 
of dollars in aid the West poured into Zaire during the Cold War lie, 
according to intelligence agencies, in Mr. Mobutu's personal European 
accounts.

Wracked by poverty and disease, Zaire has not functioned as a nation 
since anti-government riots in 1991, yet Mr. Mobutu clings to power. 
His most recent abomination is his collusion with the genocidal Rwandan 
government-in-exile, now rearming in Zaire for a resumption of tribal 
war.

When Pat Robertson visited Kinshasa in May to deliver medical supplies, 
Mr. Mobutu — ho skulks about his own nation under cover of darkness 
— ade a rare visit to the capital to greet his old pal. Mr. Robertson 
has timber and mining investments in Zaire. He has long supported 
Mr. Mobutu and is lobbying to get him a visa to visit the United States, 
where Mr. Mobutu is persona non grata. Mr. Mobutu has an ego the size 
of his bank account and badly wants to be accepted in polite society, 
so he's miffed. Mr. Robertson admits that Mr. Mobutu may have erred 
in the past, but now he's supposedly anti-corruption and pro-democracy, 
and the State Department's ban on Mr. Mobutu is, Mr. Robertson told 
reporters, "outrageous."

The State Department says it has detected no evidence in Zaire that 
Mr. Mobutu is anything but the brutal thug he was ten years ago. If 
Bob Dole et al. can't bring themselves to question Mr. Robertson's 
loonier ideas, they ought at least to ask him about the criminal company 
he keeps.

_Editorial_reprinted_from__The_Berkshire_Eagle_._

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