Grading Obama on Honduran Coup: D

[Judi Lynn]

Published on Thursday, January 21, 2010
by Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF)
Grading Obama on Honduran Coup: D
by Mark Engler

The June 28 coup in Honduras against democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya presented a crisis that would color the Obama administration's foreign policy outlook for all of the Americas — and would ultimately become one of the administration's most disappointing foreign policy failures of its first year.

Early on, the White House was earning about a B- for its response to the coup. It generally did the right thing, but it seemed to do so reluctantly and without conviction. One day after Zelaya's ouster, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that Zelaya's removal "should be condemned by all." The following day, Barack Obama declared, "We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras."

In spite of these statements, the administration avoided formally categorizing Zelaya's removal as a "military coup," a classification which would have required the U.S. government to follow diplomatic protocols mandating swift aid cuts and other forms of censure. Eventually, in September, the United States did revoke the visas for the Honduran coup president, its foreign minister, and 14 of its Supreme Court judges, and it suspended $30 million in aid. However, this represented only a fraction of total U.S. aid to Honduras. Larger streams of money continued to flow through channels, including the Millennium Challenge Corporation, ostensibly on the grounds that such aid served an important humanitarian function.

For much of the early period after the coup, Obama expressed the view that the United States should take a light hand if possible in internal Latin American affairs, and that the situation in Honduras should be primarily resolved through diplomatic efforts within the region. This nod toward non-interventionism would ordinarily have considerable merit. But amid the White House's other half-hearted measures — and with Republican lawmakers such as South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint praising coup leaders and arguing that Honduran government institutions performed "as our own Founding Fathers would have hoped" in "cleansing of usurpers" — the coup government was allowed to interpret the lack of a stronger official response as a sign of tacit sympathy from Washington.

All this was problematic but not disastrous. The Obama administration's true failure was that it bombed the final exam: the scheduled November 29 presidential elections. Shortly after brokering a deal designed to pressure the Honduran Congress to reinstate Zelaya and allow him to serve the end of his term, Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon reversed himself and declared that the United States would recognize the elections even if Zelaya remained out of office. And that is exactly what happened.

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/21-5

[Mika]

1. Actually, Obama's admin should get an A+. The coup worked. They had a plan, and it worked.

All the rest is window dressing.

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[Downwinder]

2. The "Plan" is ongoing. n/t

[Peace Patriot]

3. This article is much too charitable to President Obama, Sec of State Clinton and,

interestingly, it doesn't mention the Pentagon.

The plane carrying the kidnapped President Zelaya out of Honduras at gunpoint stopped for refueling at the U.S. military base in Soto Cano, Honduras. The US embassy in Honduras has admitted knowing about the coup ahead of time. So, who gave the order to US commanders at Soto Cano to stand down while Honduran democracy was overthrown?

This is a critical omission in the article.

For a while--in the first weeks of the coup--I thought there must have been some Bushwack mole insurrection at the Pentagon perhaps coordinated with the Bushwhack holdover appointee at the Honduran embassy, and with former Reagan death squad operatives John Negroponte and Otto Reich.

Then I found out that John 'death squad' Negroponte was advising Hillary Clinton.

Honduras is a client state of the US. Our military and their military work closely together. Their military officers are trained at the "School of the Americas." The US has a major military base in Honduras at Soto Cano, as well as port facilities. And many US multinationals use Honduran slave labor for picking bananas, sewing Gap sweatshirts and other very low paid jobs. So it is simply not credible that the US did not have the power to stop this coup from Day One, and it has furthermore become apparent that it suits this administration just fine to have a rightwing coup in Honduras beheading anti-coup activists, shooting union leaders, terrorizing the left and further destroying Honduran democracy and the hopes of its people for a better life.

This author is either ignorant of major aspects of the Honduran coup, or is performing a whitewash in the guise of a criticism.