President Obama and his party insisted that America’s standing in the world had diminished under George Bush – that we’d lost our moral compass. However, it is Obama and ultimately his own party which bears the responsibility for their backing of the enemies of America in the Honduran affair. Says the NY Post this morning:
It took a week for President Obama to say something of substance against the violent repression of anti-government protesters in Iran. Fear of meddling, he said, was the reason for the delay.
Yet it took just hours for him to publicly denounce the removal of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, an ally of Venezuelan America-hater Hugo Chavez, by that nation’s army and demand his immediate reinstatement.
No fear of meddling this time.
That’s because Barack Obama’s foreign policy is very much a moment-to-moment affair, with no guiding principles.
Certainly, President George W. Bush would’ve understood that what has been portrayed as a “banana republic” military coup was nothing of the sort — that Zelaya’s ouster was meant to preserve Honduran democracy, not suppress it.
Zelaya’s removal, after all, came at the direct order of the Honduran Supreme Court and was approved by both the nation’s attorney general and its Congress.
Replacing Zelaya as president was not a military junta but the head of the Congress, a member of Zalaya’s own political party, which had declared him unfit for public office. And the replacement immediately called for new national elections and vowed to abide by the results.
Some coup.
In fact, the monumentally incompetent Zelaya had tried to follow in Chavez’s anti-democratic footsteps, unilaterally overturning Honduras’ constitution by staging an illegal referrendum to give cover to his plan to sidestep strict term limits and run for re-election indefinitely.
When the head of the army refused to cooperate, Zelaya fired him — a move the Supreme Court quickly declared illegal.
Sad to say, international opinion backed Obama and rallied behind Zelaya.
The UN General Assembly called for Zelaya’s reinstatement (which gives a pretty clear indication of just which side holds the high moral ground here).
And the Organization of American States — which just recently moved to readmit Castro’s Cuba after a 47-year suspension — threatened to suspend Honduras’ membership unless Zelaya is reinstated.
Bad enough that Obama doesn’t seem to know when taking sides constitutes irresponsible meddling — and when it doesn’t.
Even worse that when he does choose teams, he chooses the wrong one.
Is it that he just doesn’t understand what’s happening in Honduras or is he siding with Chavez and the Castro brothers? Either is unacceptable. As we’ve not heard anything from Obama or Hillary in the last few days, I hope they’ve realized their folly and are just waiting for the Hondurans to take care of themselves. We’ve not seen any high level meetings between Zelaya and US officials.
Still a better lesson to be learned is by the actions of the UN and OAS. It needs to be clear to to us now just how leftward leaning the organizations have become. Democrats owe an apology to John Bolton for taking them on to protect American interests and those of our allies. Talk about needing a reset button. It only took Obama and the Democrats 5 months to screw up foreign policy.
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This post was written by bobsikes on July 5, 2009
