Latin America Finds U.S. Lacking on Honduras

[Sheilbh]

The obamateur botched this one like he does everything.  First he denounces the "coup" and threatens retaliation if this nutjob isn't reinstated, flattering the anti-american alliance and discouraging our allies in Latin America, and then he reverses course and surrenders, pissing of the leftists he was previously trying to mollify.

Your allies in the region are part of that anti-American alliance.  Uribe and Calderon are as staunch on this as anyone else.  That you can write that when your last post was a response to me noting how broad based the alliance is is really odd.

I get it, but how does cancelling their regular election fix the problem?

These elections have, however, apparently has pretty serious problems which means it's difficult to take seriously as an election.

What I'd want them to do is call a constitutional convention - with free elections - and ratify a new constitution before there's an election.  My understanding is that Honduras's constitution has very little notion of separation of powers - which isn't necessarily a good thing - so, for example, this wasn't technically a coup because it's constitutionally valid.  The reason it's constitutionally valid is because Honduras doesn't have a mechanism for impeachment.  I'm not convinced that we won't face the same situation in 12-16 years time.

Of course it was an attempt to re-write the constitution that kicked all this off so that's not likely.

[derspiess]

So you're saying Obama was right?

Yessir.  Broken clock & all that.

[Sheilbh]

Perhaps, but it's also possible that they're all wrong.

That's possible, but I don't think so.  I also think that recognising the coup will continue that drift in Latin American policy that you and I have discussed before.