President Obama's calling it an illegal coup.
It would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backwards into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition, rather than democratic elections.In the sense that the military removed the president from office, I suppose it is technically a coup, but I don't know about illegal. Zelaya was acting to become president for life. The military acted under orders from the Supreme Court and the Honduran legislature; it removed Zelaya from office, but then ceded power to an interim president of Zelaya's own party, duly appointed by the Honduran Congress after it formally removed Zelaya from office. What can a nation do with a tyrant but overthrow him? --and Honduras appears to have done that constitutionally.
I've never been as ashamed to be American as I have been since January, but let that pass for the present. At first I assumed Obama, stung by criticism of his handling of the Iranian uprising, was ignorantly glomming onto a chance to stand against tyranny elsewhere. Alas, no, he knew what he was doing --his administration has been actively trying to prevent this exact outcome for weeks. I haven't seen anyone focus on this. According to the WSJ:
the Obama administration and members of the Organization of American States had worked for weeks to try to avert any moves to overthrow President Zelaya, said senior U.S. officials. Washington's ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, sought to facilitate a dialogue between the president's office, the Honduran parliament and the military. The efforts accelerated over the weekend, as Washington grew increasingly alarmed. "The players decided, in the end, not to listen to our message," said one U.S. official involved in the diplomacy. On Sunday, the U.S. embassy here tried repeatedly to contact the Honduran military directly, but was rebuffed.So US non-meddling in other people's affairs apparently includes working to keep tin-pot Friends of Fidel in power and returning them there if they're tossed out. The kind of thing that really does get us hated in the 2nd world. But I digress.
Isn't this a massive humiliation for the administration and for the US generally? The Great Persuader's administration can't even get Honduras to return our calls?
