Comments:
newtgingrich Having castro call for defending democracy should convince any reasonable person that honduras was on the edge of a leftist dictatorship.
newtgingrich Sadly the obama administration has joined castro and chavez attacking honduran supreme court and congress for defending their constitution
Honduras [Andy McCarthy]
IBD has a great editorial, and Pete Wehner makes characteristically keen observations about Obama's selective meddling at Contentions.
I have a couple of questions. Now that the president has decided it's okay to meddle in Honduras (where they are fighting to keep preserve their democracy against the Chávez-style thug who Obama wants to re-install) but not Iran (where thousands of Iranians who seek democracy are being killed, maimed and jailed by a regime which has been at war with the United States for 30 years), the president's tack is to say that Honduras's action in removing Zelaya is "not legal."
What on earth makes Obama think he knows better about what is legal under the law of Honduras than the Supreme Court of Honduras and the law-writing legislature of Honduras?
The Honduran military acted after Zelaya defied an order by that nation's highest court which pronounced his coup attempt illegal; he has been replaced under a Honduran legal process by that nation's Congress, which essentially impeached him and democratically voted in a successor.
That sounds pretty legal to me. I am the first to admit I am not an expert in Honduran law, but I'd bet the Honduran Supreme Court has a better grasp on it than President Obama. On the issue of what is legal in Honduras, as between Hugo Chávez and the Honduran Supreme Court, our president has decided to go with Chávez.
Secondly, as IBD notes, the Obama administration is now "threatening to halt its $200 million in U.S. aid, immigration accords and a free-trade treaty if it doesn't put the criminal Zelaya back into office."
Can someone explain to me how it is that Obama is willingly giving $900M to Hamastan (i.e., the jihadist-controlled Gaza strip) but would pull back a comparative pittance of aid in order to penalize a poor country in our own hemisphere for trying to preserve its democracy against a would-be left-wing dictator?
Charles Krauthammer:
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.
NRO Editorial: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Njg4MTU5NzU0OTNkYWZlZjk2ZWZkYzcwNDc0Y2ViMjY=
http://blog.american.com/?p=2619
Honduran Cowboy Populist Falls Out of the Saddle
By Roger NoriegaJune 29, 2009, 5:20 pm
Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, a clownish caudillo (strongman) and acolyte of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, has been riding for a fall in his clumsy campaign to amend the constitution to allow him to seek a second term. Alas, this weekend, he fell out of the saddle—arrested by the military and sent into exile after the Supreme Court declared his efforts unconstitutional.
Zelaya was determined to replicate Chavez’s power grab, using populist rhetoric to sow class conflict and incite the mob. He demanded a referendum this past Sunday that he hoped would bless his second term. Before the vote, the Honduran supreme court, congress, electoral tribunal, attorney general, and human rights ombudsman declared the referendum illegal, and the military chief refused to order his forces to distribute the ballots. In response, Zelaya fired the general, causing all the military chiefs and the civilian defense minister to quit. The supreme court ruled that dismissal illegal, but Zelaya led a mob of his supporters to confiscate the ballots and vowed to go forward.
On Sunday morning, Zelaya was arrested by military forces and flown to Costa Rica. The supreme court blessed this move, and the congress appointed a successor, in accordance with the constitution. Last night, the Organization of American States (OAS), joined by vigorous support from the United States, demanded Zelaya’s restoration to power.
My guess is that the Hondurans—who ignored the U.S. embassy’s warnings in ousting Zelaya in the first place—will stand by their interpretation of their own constitution and go it alone until November presidential elections. The details will be debated by legal scholars and diplomats for months.
But the following is clear:
• Zelaya—consumed by personal ambition and egged on by his mentors in Caracas and Havana—provoked a confrontation that he did not have the wit to win.
• Honduran institutions rose to the challenge and applied the rule of law as they saw it: the military appears to be defending those institutions and not advancing its own agenda.
• Unwilling to cross Chavez, the OAS’s leadership turned a blind eye when Zelaya was violating the Honduran constitution as well as the region’s Democratic Charter (which explicitly blesses “separation of powers”).
The OAS has refused to act as leftist caudillos shredded their constitutions and stole elections in Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Having ignored these abuses, the OAS cannot pretend that it has any moral authority to second-guess the people of these nations when they move to defend their democracies.
My Question for US News Organizations: Wassup w/ Obama and his obvious sympathies for leftist dictatorships ? And why are you covering for him in your sorry coverage of this situation ?
From a Honduran (courtesy of NRO):
I was born in Honduras and my maternal relatives (aunts, uncles, cousins) all live there.
The country is bewildered that the world, especially the United States, is not on their side. Zelaya was confident of his plans to convert Honduras into a Venezuelan satellite. The Honduran people are proud of their constitution and are proud to have a functioning democratic system. Zelaya was replaced by a member of his own party who vows to see that this November's presidential election takes place. What happened was not a "coup" but a bipartisan effort to save the nation.
It is heartbreaking for me to see President Obama throw Honduras under the bus. He did not speak out when Zelaya was attempting to stage a sham "constitutional referendum" with ballots printed in Venezuela.
My mother immigrated from Honduras and is a registered Republican because she remembers how the GOP stood up to communists when her countrymen were afraid of Fidel Castro. Now, Hugo Chavez is threatening to invade her beloved homeland and an American president is not standing up for a free and democratic Honduras.
Honduras and Meddling [Michael Ledeen]
Andy is quite right to point out Obama's willingness to meddle in Honduran affairs, but not Iranian ones, and to put it alongside his meddling in Hamastan — to which we can add Israel (the settlements).
The basic pattern seems to be ideological. Meddling on behalf of causes that the Left supports is fine (especially, it seems, if by so doing he supports anti-democratic regimes and leaders).
And then there's the personal component: He was annoyed when the Iranian people interrupted his incipient love affair with Iran's tyrant. And he's annoyed when the Honduran people have the nerve to hold their would-be tyrant — a guy he seems to like — to the standards of their Constitution.
Beholding a Mindset [Jay Nordlinger]
Some readers have written me expressing bewilderment at our government’s stance toward Honduras right now. (One of them is Honduran.) And I was reminded of something I wrote about in Impromptus very recently. Down at the meeting of the Organization of American States, Secretary Clinton was asked about Cuba’s political prisoners — what that meant for possible Cuban admission back into the OAS. In her answer, Clinton did not talk about prisoners.
Instead, she said,“The United States, under the Obama administration, is committed to reengaging in Latin America, to working with all countries, and we have begun doing that. We believe that lifting people out of poverty in our hemisphere, narrowing the intolerable income gap that exists between the rich and the poor in our hemisphere, working for greater social inclusion, improved education and health care — these are our goals.”
Yeah, but what about the political prisoners? What about those who are in dungeons, often tortured, because they wish for a democratic way of life? Health care and “social inclusion” are fine. But what about simple freedom?
Then Mrs. Clinton made a most remarkable statement. She said, “Some might say President Obama is left-of-center. And of course, that means that we are going to work well with countries that share our commitment to improving and enhancing the human potential.”
So, under conservative presidents, America is not committed to improving and enhancing the human potential? What a statement! Our government is indeed bewildering right now. If I can wax just slightly demagogic (but only slightly): Are we intent on being approved by Chávez, Ortega, and the Castros? Or are we standing up for U.S. interests, principles, and values? Come on!
One Other Honduras Thought [Andy McCarthy]
I got a little grief last week for arguing (here and here) that Obama is a man of the hard Left who is perfectly comfortable with dictators and who, in Iran, would prefer to see the mullahs prevail than see them deposed by people who want to establish an actual democracy. Now, in Honduras, we have a would-be tyrant squaring off against people who want to depose him in the hope of preserving their democracy. On whose side has Obama come out?
Our Take on Honduras [Rich Lowry]
Here.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment