Bloodthirsty Liberal

We are all Hondurans now—or at least I would be proud to be one:

MPs in Honduras have voted overwhelmingly against reinstating President Manuel Zelaya, shrugging off international pressure four months after a coup that has isolated one of the poorest countries in the Americas.

As the vote continued, more than two-thirds of members of Congress had voted not to return the deposed president to power for the remainder of his term, which ends on January 27, as Washington and many Latin American governments had urged.

Honduran media put the ongoing vote at 98-12, well in excess of the simple majority needed in the 128-member, single-chamber Congress for the vote against restoring Mr Zelaya to succeed.

…

Politician after politician insisted that they were right the first time when they voted to oust Mr Zelaya for ignoring a Supreme Court order to cancel a referendum on changing the constitution. …

“My vote is [a lesson] for anyone who pretends to perpetuate himself in power. My vote is so that my son can look at me and say ‘Dad, you defended democracy,” said Antonio Rivera of Mr Lobo’s conservative National Party.

You rock, Sr. Rivera.

Of course, not everyone agrees:

“A new form of coup d’etat has emerged,’’ [Hugo] Chávez said during a televised speech yesterday.

I’m sure President Obama agrees, but he’ll just have to live with more rejection. After Iran, China, NATO, etc., I’m sure he’s getting used to it.

Now we know what the Obama administration sees in the guy:

It’s been 89 days since Manuel Zelaya was booted from power. He’s sleeping on chairs, and he claims his throat is sore from toxic gases and “Israeli mercenaries” are torturing him with high-frequency radiation.

“We are being threatened with death,” he said in an interview with The Miami Herald, adding that mercenaries were likely to storm the embassy where he has been holed up since Monday and assassinate him. …

Zelaya was deposed at gunpoint on June 28 and slipped back into his country on Monday, just two days before he was scheduled to speak before the United Nations. He sought refuge at the Brazilian Embassy, where Zelaya said he is being subjected to toxic gases and radiation that alter his physical and mental state.

Haven’t we met this guy before?

Not to be indelicate, but if I were holed up in the Brazilian embassy for days on end, I, too might be complaining of toxic gases. (Have you been to their steakhouses?)

Up to this point, it was not clear to me what the president and secretary of state saw in this guy, but now that I see he’s cut from the same cloth as Chavez and Ahmadinejad, it’s very clear.

Or in this case, Gallant and Goofus.

I already knew Deenis Prager was a man of convictions and moral clarity.

But I still underestimated him:

“Why have you come to Honduras?”

That is the question posed to me by Hondurans, surprised that anyone from the outside world, let alone from the media, cares enough to now visit their small country (population 8 million), a country that they themselves consider relatively insignificant.

The question is a valid one. The U.S. State Department has issued a travel alert (through July 29) warning Americans against coming here. There are very few outsiders here now. The plane from Houston to San Pedro Sula, Honduras’ second largest city, was almost empty, and the few passengers were nearly all Hondurans. The hotels are largely empty.

It is all eerily reminiscent of Jerusalem during the height of the Intifada terror. I went there then for the same reason I have come to Honduras now — to broadcast my show and thereby show solidarity with an unfairly isolated country, and to encourage, by example, people to visit Israel then and Honduras now.

Compare and contrast:

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, let me first of all speak about the coup in Honduras, because this was a topic of conversation between myself and President Uribe.

All of us have great concerns about what’s taken place there. President Zelaya was democratically elected. He had not yet completed his term. We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the President of Honduras, the democratically elected President there. In that we have joined all the countries in the region, including Colombia and the Organization of American States.

I think it’s — it would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backwards into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition rather than democratic elections. The region has made enormous progress over the last 20 years in establishing democratic traditions in Central America and Latin America. We don’t want to go back to a dark past. The United States has not always stood as it should with some of these fledgling democracies, but over the last several years, I think both Republicans and Democrats in the United States have recognized that we always want to stand with democracy, even if the results don’t always mean that the leaders of those countries are favorable towards the United States. And that is a tradition that we want to continue.

Zelaya was trying to do an end-run around the Honduran legislature, supreme court, and Constitution, and President Obama finds he was the aggrieved party? What a horse’s ass.

Via Michelle, a welcome sign of our times:

Honduras is an example to the world. We have neither oil nor dollars—but we have balls.

Big ones, mis amigos, that win prizes. You’re standing up to the entire American continent and telling them to chúpalo. I lift my sombrero to you.

If it’s not too much trouble, could you ship any spare testicular fortitude up north, maybe with a load of bananas or mangos? There’s more than a few gringos who could use a banana and mangos.

They say that when you’re in a hole you should stop digging.

What should you do when you’re in a cesspool?

Don’t ask President Obama:

Facing criticism for having backed the “wrong” side in the recent coup in Honduras, President Obama Tuesday tried to explain his advocacy on behalf of ousted President Manuel Zelaya.

“America supports now the restoration of the democratically-elected President of Honduras, even though he has strongly opposed American policies,” the president told graduate students at the commencement ceremony of Moscow’s New Economic School. “We do so not because we agree with him. We do so because we respect the universal principle that people should choose their own leaders, whether they are leaders we agree with or not. “

The president’s remarks came in the midst of a speech in which discussed “America’s interest in democratic governments that protect the rights of their people”….

What the FARC is he talking about? Reality check at register six, please!

The military removal of Zelaya as president – and the appointment of Roberto Micheletti as interim President by the Honduran legislature – came after Zelaya attempted to rewrite his nation’s constitution to end term limits to continue his rule, despite the fact that term limits in the constitution is one of eight “firm articles” that cannot be changed.

After the Honduran Legislature refused to call a constitutional convention to rewrite the constitution, Zelaya called for a referendum to do so, which the Honduran Supreme Court and Attorney General declared unconstitutional. Zelaya, allied with leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez , fired top military commander Romeo Vásquez Velásquez for refusing to carry out the referendum. Every branch of government sided against Zelaya and Congress began discussing impeachment proceedings. Acting on orders from the Honduran Supreme Court, soldiers arrested Zelaya on June 28 and sent him into exile in Costa Rica.

See, that’s what I thought. Then why is Obama doubling down in defense of this tinpot dictator?

Are you hearing what I’m hearing? President Obama had his mitts all over the “coup” (or whatever it was) in Honduras:

The Obama administration and members of the Organization of American States had worked for weeks to try to avert any moves to overthrow President Zelaya, said senior U.S. officials. Washington’s ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, sought to facilitate a dialogue between the president’s office, the Honduran parliament and the military.

The efforts accelerated over the weekend, as Washington grew increasingly alarmed. “The players decided, in the end, not to listen to our message,” said one U.S. official involved in the diplomacy. On Sunday, the U.S. embassy here tried repeatedly to contact the Honduran military directly, but was rebuffed. Washington called the removal of President Zelaya a coup and said it wouldn’t recognize any other leader.

Huh.

If you substituted “Iran” for “Honduras”, carping back-biters (like, well, me) would have had nothing to complain about.

Instead we got this:

We respect Iranian sovereignty and want to avoid the United States being the issue inside of Iran.

Huh.

Can I hear our policy on Honduras again?

U.S. President Barack Obama called the ouster illegal.

Huh.

I don’t get it. Maybe Mary Anastasia O’Grady can explain it to me:

Hugo Chávez’s coalition-building efforts suffered a setback yesterday when the Honduran military sent its president packing for abusing the nation’s constitution.

It seems that President Mel Zelaya miscalculated when he tried to emulate the success of his good friend Hugo in reshaping the Honduran Constitution to his liking.

But Honduras is not out of the Venezuelan woods yet. Yesterday the Central American country was being pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton and, of course, Hugo himself. The Organization of American States, having ignored Mr. Zelaya’s abuses, also wants him back in power. It will be a miracle if Honduran patriots can hold their ground.

That Mr. Zelaya acted as if he were above the law, there is no doubt. While Honduran law allows for a constitutional rewrite, the power to open that door does not lie with the president. A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress.

Well, that explains why Chavez, the hefty jefe, likes him: that’s behavior straight out of his play book.

But why are we supporting this tinpot?

The OAS response is no surprise. Former Argentine Ambassador to the U.N. Emilio Cárdenas told me on Saturday that he was concerned that “the OAS under Insulza has not taken seriously the so-called ‘democratic charter.’ It seems to believe that only military ‘coups’ can challenge democracy. The truth is that democracy can be challenged from within, as the experiences of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and now Honduras, prove.” A less-kind interpretation of Mr. Insulza’s judgment is that he doesn’t mind the Chávez-style coup.

The struggle against chavismo has never been about left-right politics. It is about defending the independence of institutions that keep presidents from becoming dictators. This crisis clearly delineates the problem. In failing to come to the aid of checks and balances, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Insulza expose their true colors.

I’m serious when I say I still don’t get it. About all I can come up with is that Obama supports left wing dictators over democratic institutions.

Am I off base? And if I’m not, what does that suggest about his intentions here?

PS: American Thinker is thinking along the same lines:

Sadly, the Obama presidency keeps getting “curiouser and curiouser.” According to Obama, Israel’s settlement building is illegal, the Iranian elections are legitimate, and the Honduran military’s respect for the rule of law is “not legal.” In other words, it is fine for the Obama administration to meddle in the internal affairs of a sovereign ally, it has no interest in defending a popular uprising in which people are dying in the name of freedom, and it will support the Chavez-cloned dictator in the face of a democratic struggle.