From Coup-lite to Truth-lite: US Policy and Death Squad Democracy in Honduras

[Judi Lynn]

Published on Monday, January 4, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
From Coup-lite to Truth-lite: US Policy and Death Squad Democracy in Honduras
by Andrés Thomas Conteris

In the Top Ten Ways You Can Tell Which Side the United States Government is On With Regard to the Military Coup in Honduras, Mark Weisbrot correctly illustrates U.S. backing for the coup regime and its lack of support for democracy. For more than 100 days, I have been holed up inside the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, accompanying President Manuel Zelaya and covering the story for Democracy Now! and other independent media. In case Mark's points were not convincing, here are 10 more ways to help you decide.

10. The resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on June 30th strongly condemned the coup in Honduras. The United States, however, prevented the UN Security Council from taking strong measures consistent with the resolution.

9. When President Zelaya returned to Tegucigalpa and took refuge in the Brazilian embassy on September 21st, Lewis Amselem, the U.S. representative at the Organization of American States (OAS), called it "foolish" and "irresponsible." Amselem, whose background is with the U.S. Southern Command, is known in the halls of the OAS as "the diplomator." He led the charge for validating the Honduran elections, while most countries opposed recognition of elections held under the coup regime.

8. The U.S. Southern Command sponsored the PANAMAX 09 joint maneuvers from September 11-21 off the coast of Panama with military forces from 20 countries. Even though the U.S. publicly stated that ties had been severed with the Honduran military, the invitation for Honduras to participate in these maneuvers stood firm. The Honduran armed forces finally said they would withdraw from the exercises, only after several Latin American countries threatened to boycott them.

7. Key members of the Honduran military involved in the coup received training at the School of the Americas (which changed its name to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation -- WHISC), including Generals Romeo Vasquez and Luis Javier Prince. Even after the June 28th coup, the Pentagon continued training members of the Honduran military at WHISC in Ft. Benning, Georgia.

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/03-7

[EFerrari]

1. An excellent rundown. Thank you, Judi Lynn. n/t

[Peace Patriot]

2. Obama's smart-ass remark about people wanting U.S. intervention in Honduras really irritated me.

This writer (Andrés Thomas Conteris) really takes it on. Here is what he writes:

"2. In August 2009, at the Summit of North American Leaders in Mexico, President Obama had harsh words for opponents of his policy by declaring, 'The same critics who say that the United States has not intervened enough in Honduras are the same people who say that we're always intervening. . . I think what that indicates is that maybe there's some hypocrisy involved in their approach to U.S.-Latin American relations. . .'

"The ongoing U.S. intervention and hypocrisy in Honduras goes well beyond what Mark Weisbrot and I have described. Aid continues to flow to the de facto regime, despite U.S. law that mandates cutting aid to military coups; that is intervention. Lifting the symbolic sanctions temporarily imposed on the dictatorship after the Accord was signed but not implemented; that is intervention. Bestowing harsher criticism on President Zelaya and his nonviolent supporters rather than on the perpetrators of gross human rights crimes; that is hypocrisy."

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My sentiments exactly. And I would add, at this point, that it has become so clear now that the U.S. supported this coup all along, and instigated this coup, that the hypocrisy is these smart-ass remarks of our President are all the more sharply underscored.

Further, the U.S. shoveling multi-millions of U.S. tax dollars to coup-supporting rightwing groups in Honduras, through budgets like the USAID and the Millennium fund, plus multi-millions to the Honduran military, are intervention in one of its ugliest forms. To then whine about people wanting intervention--in a good cause, for once-- is absurd, callous, arrogant and out-of-touch. I hate having to say these things about Obama. While I did not have particularly high hopes for him, because I carefully read what he actually said in campaign policy statements, and it was not good, I did not dream that he would ever do anything like the Honduran coup. I thought he was a better man than that--not a bold policy thinker, by any means, but a well-meaning if cautious leader with some degree of sincerity when he announced a new policy of "peace, respect and cooperation" in Latin America. I did not expect anything this bad. In that sense, I am disappointed. Add the U.S./Colombia military agreement and I am actually alarmed that Obama could be much worse than Bush on Latin America. At first I blamed Hillary Clinton. I take that back. At first I thought it was Bushwhack moles in the Pentagon and the diplomatic corps, sabotaging Obama's stated policy, in cahoots with McCain, Negroponte, DeMint and the other Honduran players. Then I started blaming Clinton. But I see no evidence of discord between Obama and Clinton on this matter, nor between Obama/Clinton and the Puke "death squad" crowd. So, either Obama is in accord with this horror, or he is powerless--and either thing is very bad news, indeed.