Obama stands with the tyrants
Unfortunately Obama is comfortable in that crowd.Dictators and demagogues can rest easy on President Obama's watch. When thousands of Iranians flooded the streets of Tehran protesting a rigged election and were beaten and shot down by pro-regime thugs, the president bided his time before making a series of noncommittal statements. He seemed to hope it would all just go away. However, when a socialist demagogue was ejected unceremoniously from Honduras on Sunday by his own government for trying to establish a presidency for life, Mr. Obama instantly sprang to his defense.
What happened in Honduras was not a military coup. Honduras has a civilian president, Roberto Micheletti, a member of former President Manuel Zelaya's own Liberal Party, who was elevated to the post after Mr. Zelaya was removed. The army did not seize power, but acted as the elected government's instrument in ousting Mr. Zelaya, who was well on his way to subverting the Honduran constitution and erecting a dictatorship.
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Mr. Zelaya is a demagogue in the mold of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, who bolstered the Zelaya regime through a subsidized energy program called Petrocaribe and gave direct financial support through the ALBA Bank. The acronym stands for Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, a Chavez-backed anti-U.S. alliance of nine Latin American states, prominently Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua, all of which are pursuing explicitly anti-U.S. policies.
In throwing its unqualified support to Mr. Zelaya, the Obama administration is enabling America's strategic foes. This shortsightedness is truly breathtaking and underscores the incoherence of the administration's foreign policy. Smart power? We think not.
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Whatever the outcome of the crisis in Honduras, Mr. Obama has failed another key test of international leadership. The United States is in an increasingly perilous position in Latin America and needs solid allies to stem the anti-American tide being led by Venezuela. Mr. Obama should think twice before rushing to stand beside the likes of dictators such as Mr. Chavez and Cuba's Fidel Castro. They support Mr. Zelaya because he is a fellow traveler, a socialist in good standing, a member of their anti-gringo alliance. There's no reason for America to support him.
But few should call this "smart" diplomacy. What Zelaya did was indefensible and that is why he lost in the court and the legislature. I have yet to see Obama condemn his high handed illegal acts. Instead he has criticized those who stood up for the Honduran constitution. This is another drift into incoherence that has marked his foreign policy on too many occasions.
He seems to think it is smart to be critical of people on our side and forgiving and tolerant of the tyrants on the other side. He is not going to be able to get away with this kind of nonsense forever.
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