From The Wall Street Journal:
The State Department keeps slapping an ally.
Honduras will inaugurate president-elect Porfirio Lobo this week, two months after one of the world’s most recently famous little countries held a successful democratic election. So we are left to wonder why the United States State Department is still trying to hammer anyone there who dared to participate last summer in the constitutional removal of President Manuel Zelaya from office.
The U.S. has formally recognized the November presidential election, and the State Department tells us it also recognizes the congress’s second vote to remove Mr. Zelaya. So what’s the problem?
It appears that State’s pettiness still flows from the refusal of interim president Roberto Micheletti and his cabinet, from June to December, to cave to the U.S. demand that they reinstate Mr. Zelaya. In earlier acts of pique, State stripped the U.S. visas of Mr. Micheletti, his advisers and cabinet officials and even the entire Honduran Supreme Court. Last week it yanked more visas from members of the interim government.
Insofar as Mr. Micheletti is leaving office January 27, the only explanations for this pistol-whipping would appear to be: Don’t mess with Uncle Sam’s regional agenda, which since April’s Summit of the Americas includes overtures to Hugo Chávez, Raúl Castro and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega.
What’s the point here? At a time when the United States and the State Department have more than enough to do, with finishing up in Iraq, with the expansion of the war on al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the ever-growing threat of nuclear proliferation, with the devastation in Haiti, with the People’s Republic of China continuing to fight against basic freedoms, with the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea having nuclear weapons accompanied by both poverty and stupidity, and the Islamic Republic of Iran doing only God knows what, why do we have the time and resources to waste being so petulant over Honduras?
President-elect Porfirio Lobo will be inaugurated in a couple of days, and he’s already agreed to let deposed President Manuel Zelaya leave the country, for the Dominican Republic, despite pending charges against him. La Gringa doesn’t think much of this, as you can read in Pepe’s deal with Zelaya Part 1 and Part 2.
I’m hoping that the real problem is that President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton are just too busy with more important stuff, and they just don’t have the time to check up on some third tier political appointee or Foreign Service desk officer. But someone in the bowels of the State Department seems determined to help the chavistas, and that person needs to go.
“But someone in the bowels of the State Department seems determined to help the chavistas, and that person needs to go.”
Elevate your sights, the “person” you seek is this country’s chief policy maker, and he doesn’t work in the State Department. No flunky paper pusher is calling the shots here, the Obama Administration’s opposition to Honduran democracy is rooted in the same political belief system busy undermining the free-market system right here in the USA.
Unfortunately, we’re about 3 years away from an opportunity to rectify the problem.
So we are left to wonder why the United States State Department is still trying to hammer anyone there who dared to participate last summer in the constitutional removal of President Manuel Zelaya from office.
Why am I not surprised to see that the Wall St Journal doesn’t understand why an unconstitutional power grab shouldn’t be rewarded?