NEOAVATARA

UPDATE:  Above are pictures from protesters supporting the coup…and blasting Obama and CNN.  Zelaya tried to return to the country on July 5th, but was denied landing rights.

We now have a clear explanation of what Obama’s defenders meant when they said he wouldn’t meddle in foreign countries:  what it means is, he will make an excuse when he clearly has no idea what he is doing.

Meddling was the excuse given when the Iranian election protests started.  Clearly, President Obama had no idea what to do.  He was not confident in his own decision making, unlike Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joseph Biden, both of whom who wanted to be more proactive in the Iranian situation.  So, Obama moved to his default stance:  do nothing, and use the excuse of ‘meddling’.

Remarkably, his liberal defenders were dumb enough to fall for that.  This is especially wondersome after Obama’s reaction to Israel and Palestine, a conflict in which Obama has done nothing but meddle.  He has dictated specific actions to both sides, especially the Israelis, from day one.  That is one reason that Obama now has a favorability rating in single digits in the Jewish nation; they simply don’t trust him at all.

Then this weekend, Honduras was hit with was basically a coup.  Over the weekend, President Jose Manuel Zelaya was deposed by what was virtually a military coup, with significant political backing.  Zelaya had been at odds with the other branches of government over a referendum he wanted to hold Sunday. The nation’s Supreme Court ruled the referendum was illegal and Congress voted not to hold it.  The Supreme Court also overturned Zelaya’s dismissal of Honduras’ top general, who said the military would not participate in the referendum. The court ordered he general be reinstated immediately.  Zelaya disregarded those actions and vowed to hold the vote Sunday anyway.

Sounds like internal affairs to me.

Obama, along with buddies such as Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, immediately denounced the coup.  Even more so, news has come out that Obama and the State Department were actively involved in trying to prevent the coup.  The Organization of American States has denounced the revolt.  I guess meddling is o.k. in some instances.

Now, I am not against denouncing the coup.  The problem is, Obama is confident to act correctly in this situation, unlike Iran, because there is virtually nothing at stake here.  Is there really any American interests of signficance in Honduras?

The problem is, if you use the logic that liberals have been using for Iran for weeks, we were meddling.  Zelaya was ignoring the Honduran constitution, so much so that he was willing to hold an illegal vote.  So, what legal process would Obama like to allow a President ignoring a constitutional democracy?  I don’t know what the right answer is, but if you use Obama’s logic, the answer is nothing should have been done, and we should have watched as interested but uninvolved observers.

Additionally, like Iran, it sounds like the majority of the country supports Zelaya’s removal, because he was out of control, and it appears he was well on his way to trying to form a dictatorship.  The coup d’etat, if that is what it was, was led not by the military, but by the legislature.  A court ordered the President to be arrested, and the military followed the order.  No military general was put in charge; a legislator was.  Doesn’t sound like a classic coup to me.  Now, if you want to argue that the President should have been placed under arrest, instead of kicked out of the country, I agree.  But getting the legislature, the courts, and the military to agree…that kind of sounds like a democratic revolt to me.

The New Republic seems to agree with me as well:

Sunday’s coup in Honduras has been portrayed as a throwback to the bad old days when Latin American armies got drafted in as the ultimate umpires of political conflict. But in arresting president Manuel Zelaya in his pajamas and putting him on the first plane out of the country, Honduras’s generals were acting out of fear of a genuine and growing threat to Latin Democracy: the looming prospect of unchecked, hyper-empowered executive power held for life by a single, charismatic individual.

So Obama has now stuck his nose into a mess that has highly questionable legality, with questionable internal public support, and where the people who were abiding by the law appear to be on opposite sides to the American President.  In fact, this looks like American arrogance the type of which Obama promised he would avoid…he is telling the Democratically elected legislature to not defend its own Constitution.  And where was Obama and Secretary of State Clinton in denouncing Zelaya’s unconstitutional maneuvers before the coup ever happened?  Honduras’ current leadership is unified against Zelaya’s return, and said that the only way he would return to power is by foreign invasion.  If there was a time to meddle, it was before the coup, not after it.  So now, is Obama going to continue to support the ousted leader, who clearly by his own admission was breaking the law and may even have drug ties; or support the Democratic legislature of Honduras?

You wonder if Obama will get his act together sooner or later.  At this rate, maybe the better answer is never.