America blunders with Honduras

I have to interrupt this fascinating (to me only) discussion about Astana (the cycling team, not the capital of Kazakhstan) to note the blundering of the current U.S. government in Central America, in particular Honduras. Basically, the situation in Honduras has been the kind of chaos beloved by the fringes of both parties.

Back during the summer, the president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, scheduled a referendum to assess "popular support" for changing the Honduran constitution and removing the one-term limit on the president. Most countries quake at the thought of a strongman who wants to set himself up as a leader for life; many historians think that the greatest gift George Washington ever gave America was to limit his presidency to two terms, thus establishing a precedent that no American was willing to break for fear of looking like an egomaniac -- someone who thinks he's better than Washington -- until the hyper-egomaniac Franklin Roosevelt shattered it and forced Congress and the states to put it in the Constitution. (You could incite quite a debate among historians by asking whether the willingness of Americans to elect FDR to a third and fourth term showed that some part of American national character had been lost during the Great Depression, but that's a debate for another day.)

In Honduras, not only is the term limit already in the Constitution, but it is in a section that is designated as un-amendable. (At one point, Lincoln proposed to put the continuation of slavery in the South in such an un-amendable provision of the U.S. Constitution, but the South fortunately (?) opted to try to secede instead.) Zelaya's opponents, including within his own party, saw this as a set-up for him to abrogate the provision by presidential proclamation (in the manner of Zelaya's patron, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela), especially since the election for Zelaya's replacement was taking place in November. They brought an action with the Honduran Supreme Court to block the referendum. The Supreme Court promptly ruled that it could not take place. Zelaya ignored them and had the ballots printed. Then the Supreme Court blocked the Honduran Army (which had them stored on Army bases) from distributing them. Zelaya called out his mobs, and they attacked the Army bases and seized the ballots. The Supreme Court then ordered the Army to arrest Zelaya.

Here's where the Army dropped the ball. It didn't want to be caught in the middle between the Big Dictator (Zelaya) and the Supreme Court, figuring (rightly) that its leaders could be cashiered if they didn't back the winner. So it decided to alter the contest. Instead of arresting Zelaya and holding him for trial, it deported him. And that set the stage for the farce that has followed.

The Honduran government, which was dominated by Zelaya's party, promptly placed the next person in line for the presidency (Speaker of the House Roberto Micheletti) in office; the office of the vice-president was vacant because the VP, who also belonged to the same party as Zelaya and Michiletti, had a major split with Zelaya last year and resigned rather than support the government any longer. And that would have been the end of it, except for Hugo Chavez and his minions blustering -- until Barack Obama decided to get involved.

He desided to support the Big Dictator over the rest of the government and demanded Zelaya's reinstatement. Chavez was overjoyed. As a result, Honduras plunged into chaos for a little while. But, even though the U.S. imposed harshly punitive sanctions on Honduras (continuing Obama's trend of turning on our allies while appeasing our enemies), the situation stabilized with Zelaya out of power. Even though the EU and the US said that they would not recognize the results of the November elections unless Zelaya was returned to power, most Hondurans had come to the conclusion that the guy couldn't be trusted. Costa Rica's leftist president offered a "compromise" that would require the government to make all the concessions now in return for Zelaya's promise that he would make concessions in the future -- a promise that everyone but Obama could see was empty (since all Zelaya would say was that such a promise wasn't binding on him since he had been removed from power illegally). Hondurans rejected the compromise, which apparently infuriated Obama and his puppets at teh State department, led by Hillary Clinton. But as the sanctions got tougher, the unity of Honduras against Zelaya became more apparent. It was obvious that the Chavez/Obama strategy wasn't working to restore their ally.

...which led to a new strategy. On Sunday, Zelaya snuck in to Honduras, apparently with the help of the fellow Chavistista who are running El Salvador (though they deny it) and holed up in the embassy of Brazil, another Chavez ally. The strategy had two prongs: on one hand, the Hondurans might attack the Brazilian embassy to arrest him. As embassies are seen as the property of the foreign country, this would be the equivalent of Honduras attacking Brazil, which would give Chavez's allies in El Salvador and Nicaragua a pretext to attack Honduras and probably bring down the current government, since no one could support Honduras after that. This was the action that was apparently hoped for by Chavez and Zelaya, but -- although the Hondurans briefly cut off the water supply to the embassy -- it didn't happen. The second prong was that Zelaya's street mobs, who had attacked the army bases for him, would arise and lead a revolution on his behalf. However, although hundred of people showed up, that wasn't enough to take on the Honduran army -- and the government imposed a curfew to prevent people from camping out at the Brazilian embassy and arrested a hundred or so people who wouldn't disperse, while permitting another 300 or so to enter the embassy.

About 200 of those inside-the-embassy demonstrators have since gone home, leaving Zelaya with a shrinking core of supporters. The nationwide curfew was lifted early this morning, allowing people to return to work as of today. And Brazil's appeal to the UN to restore Zelaya to power seems to have netted it little other than a suspension of UN aid to the Honduran election commission. But everyone is still on edge, because no one knows how far Obama will go to support Hugo Chavez and his minions. What will the U.S. do next?