Why does Obama meddle only when the pro-democracy side is winning?
(Image from Investor Business Daily's Michael Ramirez)
Updates 7/3/09 - Christian Science Monitor: "A coup in Honduras? Nonsense." Keep up to date by regularly checking news and commentary at www.freehonduras.com
- (Original Post) - There's no lack of sane coverage of the Honduran situation which makes one wonder what gives with Obama and his State Department. What are they inhaling? Click here for an important Wall Street Journal article, note the comprehensive and excellent editorial in Investor's Business Daily, and turn to Fausta's Blog for details. (HT: Wintery Knight Blog for the link to Fausta and the cartoon above). Charles Krauthammer expostulated against Obama last night on Fox News:
Well, the president has a knack for getting all of these big decisions wrong. Two weeks ago, he refuses to meddle in a country where peaceful demonstrators are getting shot by a theocratic dictatorship. He doesn't want to choose sides.
And now he's eager to meddle on behalf of the president in Honduras who is a Chavez wannabe, who is strong-arming his way to a referendum—that has been declared illegal by his Supreme Court—as a way to...establish a constituent assembly which will establish a new constitution, which will be a Chavez-like dictatorship.
That's what everybody understands in Honduras, and that's why the Supreme Court had ruled the referendum illegal. Only Congress has a right to call it, not the president. Congress had denounced it.
The Supreme Court had told the military not to assist in the referendum because it's illegal. So Zelaya fires the chief of staff of the army. The Supreme Court orders him reinstated; he fires him again.
This guy is acting extra-constitutionally. Yes, he was elected, but Hitler was as well, and Chavez also was. It's easy to dismantle a democracy if you're president and if you are intent on doing it—-and [Zelaya] is intent on doing it.
So our decision ought to be: Yes, a coup isn't a nice thing, but it's preferable to having Zelaya dismantle the democracy. And we should insist on the elections of a president as scheduled in November, so it is a temporary situation.
Look, a rule of thumb here is whenever you find yourself on the side of Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, and the Castro twins, you ought to reexamine your assumptions.