Unlike other interventionist-oriented conservatives, I’ve not gotten behind the efforts to have America back Mousavi, a radical Islamist opponent of the radical Islamist regime in Iran. Such infighting is too complicated and the results too likely to be distasteful for any postive outcome to happen from taking such sides where we will not do anything to support one side or the other and can’t be sure which is better from the standpoint of U.S. interests.
For many of the same reasons, I don’t think we should be taking sides in Honduras, as Obama has done. The Cold War is over; most of what happens in Latin America should be the business of Latin Americans. Beyond taking sides, Obama has taken the wrong side. The Honduran Supreme Court, their unanimous legislature (including the President’s party), and the army have undertaken what is the very opposite of coup, but rather an anti-coup. It is an anti-coup because, while it involves military force, it is directed by court order and civilian authorities against a would-be caudillo in the mold of Bolivar, Chavez, Castro, and Allende. Zelaya’s efforts to stop the very sensible constitutional measure in Honduras limiting presidential terms is not so different from similar efforts undertaken by Chavez and successful efforts along these lines by Castro.
Why does Obama support these losers?
Obama looks at the Cold War as an immoral and short-sighted series of policies where the US got behind thugs for self-interested reasons and thereby alienated the Latin American people. He went to school in the early 80s, where “US Out of El Salvador” and similar rallying cries evidenced a great deal of moral confusion in the allegedly less complex moral world of the Cold War. Before and during the Cold War, the Latin American model historically tends to be one of extremes and the absence of the rule of law; until recently, the choice has been either left-wing or right-wing thuggery. The democratic regimes of Brazil, Venezulea, Bolivia, and now Honduras are again threatened by the allure of the populist strong man acting above the constraints of law to express the “true will of the people.”
The Latin American situation is different from Iran in important ways. The US has intervened more often there, so perhaps it made sense for Obama to specify the US was not behind the coup. But this is no reason to get behind Zelaya and support his restoration. It was he who ignored the Honduras Supreme Court and acted lawlessly. It was he and not the short-term emergency that threatens the long-term political health of Honduras. Simply because the military is involved, does not a coup make. Law ultimately comes down to force; whether we are seeing the police or military, both are arms of the state, and in this case were acting under the aegis of lawful orders by the authorities.
It would be a great shame if the US, which honorably stood behind the Nicaraguan Contras, stood up for Cuban refugees, adopted a sensibly netural stance in Argentina during the Falklands War, and supported but tempored Chile’s Pinochet, became the “yes man” to the recurrding dead-end in Latin American politics: the lawless, populist, strong-man. Obama’s anti-imperialist holdover views from the Cold War blind him to the indigenous evils that arise in other lands. The talk of “fighting for the people” blinds him to the deeper realities and dead-ends of Latin American history. What seems like a morally simple case at first glance is more complicated and, in the case of Honduras as with Chile, may be a necessary evil that will soon pass, unlike the more persistent alternative.
Subscribe To This Feed
