Opinion, L.A. Times: Honduras' coup must not stand

Honduras' coup must not stand
Other nations will not hesitate to step into the vacuum if the U.S. fails to act.
By Robert White and Glenn Hurowitz
August 31, 2009

When Honduran soldiers entered democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya's bedroom and packed him off in his pajamas at gunpoint to exile this summer, the politicians and industrialists who backed the ouster had confidence that President Obama wouldn't touch them.

Even though the United States maintains 600 troops in Honduras, they thought they could pull off the first successful military coup in Latin America since the end of the Cold War. So far, they're right: The Honduran junta's intransigence in negotiations to restore democracy has been rewarded with U.S. complacency, setting an extremely dangerous precedent for other areas of the world. Unexpectedly, in the age of Obama, democracy is in retreat.

In the wake of the coup, the United Nations and the Organization of American States passed rare unanimous resolutions with U.S. support calling for Zelaya's immediate, safe and unconditional restoration. Obama labeled the actions a "coup" and sponsored the valiant efforts of Costa Rican President Oscar Arias for a negotiated solution in which the coup leaders would gain amnesty in exchange for restoring Zelaya to office, albeit with limited powers.

But in response to the administration's extremely generous concessions, the coup leaders responded with vicious attacks. Instead of engaging in sincere negotiations, they are digging in for the long haul. They are threatening, for example, to offset the relatively weak economic sanctions and visa restrictions imposed on Hondurans by reversing the country's ban on environmentally disastrous open-pit mining.

Meanwhile, they've hired well-connected Democratic lobbyists, such as Clinton administration veteran Lanny Davis, to mount a PR campaign against the restoration of democracy. And Republican South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint has shamelessly supported their anti-democratic efforts -- defending the coup on the Senate floor.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-hurowitz31-2009aug31,0,273853.story

that the Obama administration should act to restore democracy in Honduras--is almost cancelled out by the authors' weird reasons for recommending this. For instance, they say that if the US doesn't act, "Hugo Chavez" (the bogeyman) will act--could "cobble together" a coalition--and may even invade Honduras--to create a "client state" and a "beachhead" for his "unsavory friends" (Iran, China, Russia). Thus, they assert, Chavez will "suddenly" be seen as democracy's savior to "millions of people in Latin America" who will consequently "turn a blind eye" to his "abuses."

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"Venezuela's Hugo Chavez has already threatened military intervention to restore democracy to Honduras. If the U.S. continues to sit on the sidelines, Chavez could cobble together a coalition to reinstall Zelaya and create an anti-American client state in Honduras that might serve as a political and economic beachhead for Chavez's Iranian, Chinese and Russian allies. Millions of people in Latin America would suddenly see Chavez, not the United States, as the guarantor of democracy and freedom -- and be willing to turn a blind eye to his abuses and his unsavory friends." --from the OP

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Disinformation:

1. US vs. Venezuelan "client states"

Honduras is a US "client state"--almost completely dependent on US trade and military aid--and has been a US "client state" for many decades. While its ruling class has imposed "free trade for the rich" on behalf of Chiquita International and other global corporate predators, the US props up this unrepresentative oligarchy with multi-millions in military aid. Its rightwing coupsters have received multi-millions of political dollars from John McClain's US taxpayer-funded "International Republican Institute" via USAID, and its big, coup-supporting businesses get multi-millions from Hillary Clinton's "Millennium Corporation."

To assert that "Hugo Chavez" (bogeyman) wants Honduras as a "client state" without disclosing the fact that Honduras IS a US client state is to tell a very big lie of omission.

Further, name one Venezuelan "client state." There is no such thing. Venezuela has alliances and trades with many countries. It controls absolutely no one. Nor does it seek to. Nor would other Latin American countries put up with it. Sovereignty is the no. 1 issue in Latin America. Latin American countries have formed trade groups and political groups--ALBA, UNASUR, Mercosur, the Rio Group--to defend their sovereignty against US bullying and interference, by banding together and asserting their collective economic and political strength. A prime example of this is UNASUR's action when the US/Bushwhacks funded/organized a white separatist insurrection in Bolivia last September, and UNASUR members Brazil and Argentina used their economic clout (as Bolivia's chief gas customers) to help Evo Morales defeat that attempted coup. That UNASUR initiative was led by Chile. It was the collective will of ALL South American countries that Bolivia maintain its independence and its democracy.

This is the context in which Venezuela operates--a collaborative context. Venezuela often gives aid to poorer countries. So does Brazil. So do all the better off countries. Venezuela and its president have many friends, allies and trade partners. They have NO client states.

It is a complete PHANTOM that Venezuela has territorial ambitions and threatens any country with domination--as the US has always done and continues to do. The US currently has several "client states" in Latin America--the most notorious being Colombia: $6 BILLION in military aid, plus--recently announced--seven new US military bases--for a country with one of the worst human rights records on earth, where, so far this year alone, 25 union leaders have been murdered by rightwing paramilitary death squads with close ties to the Colombian military and government--and where many thousands of political leftists, human rights workers, peasant farmers, community organizers, union leaders and others have been slaughtered over the last half decade. In Peru--another US "client state"--indigenous people who are defending the Amazon from multi-national corporate mining and logging have been mowed down by gunship helicopters and assault rifles provided by US taxpayers!

THAT is a "client state"--"free trade for the rich" enforced by US military aid.

These L.A. Times op-ed writers are total liars and hypocrites on this issue. And they reflect the twisted, "Alice in Wonderland" jabberwocky of US foreign policy in Latin America. We don't support democracy there. We support the bad guys--while Venezuela and its many friends and allies--including the leaders of Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay, Paraguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala, and, until recently, Honduras--and the vast majority of the people in these countries--are trying to create something better--REAL democracy, TRUE representative government--backed up by Latin American controlled institutions, such as the new South American "common market," UNASUR. It is a great collective effort and a great and historical movement "from below"--from the voters, from workers and the poor, and from real democrats of all classes and professions.

It has no bullies. It has no ambitious "dictators." That is a US corpo/fascist wet dream imposed on our hapless, brainwashed people for obvious purposes. The leftist democracy movement in Latin America is a cooperative enterprise that opposes bullies and "dictators."

Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, said this, about Chavez: "They can invent all sorts of things to criticize Chavez, but not on democracy!" He knows Chavez well. They meet face to face every month, to work out trade deals and plan initiatives. THAT is the reality in Latin America: Chavez is a FRIEND AND ALLY of other leaders, and an excellent president of Venezuela with a continual approval rating among his own people in the 60% range.

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2. Chavez's "abuses" and millions "suddenly" seeing him as the defender of democracy

These assertions are simply ridiculous. They don't name a single "abuse" because none of the things that he is accused of by our corpo/fascist press is defendable. They dissolve before the facts. And I have personally researched every one of these allegations and know this to be true. Besides that, Lula da Silva's word is a lot more reliable than that of our lying press corps and their scriptwriters at the CIA.

Chavez is ALREADY SEEN as the defender of democracy by millions of Latin Americans. He is not going to be "suddenly" seen that way. The Bolivarian Revolution and its peaceful defeat of the US-supported rightwing military coup attempt in Venezuela in 2002 was the spark that set off this entire leftist democracy movement that has swept South America and half of Central America. And even this assertion, by the op-ed writers, is so twisted around--so unreal, so opposite of reality--that it simply omits the people of Venezuela, without whom Chavez would have no power and would be dead today. It was the people of Venezuela who inspired democracy movements all over the region.

Chavez is already seen as a democrat with a small d--by his own people, by the leaders of the region and by most of the people in the region. The threat that the Honduran coup poses is NOT that Chavez will "suddenly" be seen as a democrat, but that the US will be exposed as anti-democratic, which most Latin Americans already have good reason to believe.

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3. Distortion of the US role in the Honduran coup

The Honduran military does nothing--for instance, kidnapping the president--without a nod from the Pentagon and/or the State Department. That is what being a "client state" means. Their booty comes from Washington.

The commanders at the US military base at Soto Cano, Honduras, sat on their hands while the Honduran military stopped at Soto Cano to transfer the kidnapped president from a helicopter to a plane, to illegally fly him out of the country at gunpoint. The US embassy admitted knowing about the coup ahead of time. (They "advised against it," they said.) The US could have stopped it at any point, including on the several occasions that Zelaya tried to return to Honduras, first by plane then by roads, and was blocked by the Honduran military. The US military did nothing. Clearly, someone told the US commanders at Soto Cano to stand down. And, despite cosmetic "punishments" (freezing of funds that are "not already in the pipe"--har, har), that is what the State Department has been doing for two months--putting on a show, and standing down.

And the reasons for this hypocritical policy are more than likely, a) to insure rightwing victory in the November elections in Honduras, and b) to secure the US military base at Soto Cano for the Pentagon's war planning in the region.

Zelaya doubled the minimum wage in Honduras--a country with one of the biggest rich/poor discrepancies in the world--which was particularly offensive to Chiquita International (a corporation that has been paying death squads in Colombia to take care of their "labor problem") and other global corporate predators operating sweatshops in Honduras. He also raised teachers' salaries, cut bus ticket prices for the poor, provided school lunches and introduced other basic human decency reforms. Labor unions, community groups, small farmers, the indigenous and others--representing a broad spectrum of Honduran society--have long desired constitutional reform in Honduras. Their constitution was written during the Reagan "reign of terror" and has loopholes big enough to drive a rightwing military coup through (as Al Giordano has so aptly described it). Zelaya responded to this widespread desire by proposing an advisory vote in November on whether or not people wanted to form constitutional assemblies to discuss and re-write the constitution. It was this proposal that prompted the oligarchy to send the military to shoot up his house, kidnap him at gunpoint and remove him from the country.

Hondurans have been living under martial law now for more than two months. The coup is holding thousands of political activists in prison. They have killed several. They have shut down all opposition and neutral media (one of their first acts). And they are planning to hold the election under these conditions (sans the constitutional advisory vote). They will win. And all signs thus far point to the US being quite happy with that. That has likely been the reason for all the US delaying tactics, and for their failure to stop the coup at the beginning.

The OAS--which does a good job of election monitoring in Latin America--has already said that it will not recognize the results of that election. Conditions for a fair election do not exist in Honduras. But one of the US tactics in letting this coup go forward has been its attempt to marginalize the OAS. It will be interesting to see what Hillary Clinton & co. do about the election, in view of this OAS policy. They have put themselves between a rock and hard place on this. They have been making more anti-coup noises lately, because the Honduran coup is threatening the US corporate agenda all over Latin America. But it is the election that is the critical point. They may force the coup to step back, and may even get Zelaya restored (for the few months left in his term--he is term limited and cannot run in November), but if this election goes forward without serious, concerted effort by the US and the OAS to ensure transparency, fairness and--very important--undoing all the harm and disadvantages to the left that have been inflicted--it will be a farce with completely unreliable results.

The op-ed writers describe US actions as "drift."

"Faced with (pressure from Puke Senators), the administration seems to be drifting toward perilous inaction."

This is very inaccurate. We are not looking at "drift." We are looking at collusion--and, whether the colluders are enacting Obama policy, or sabotaging it--that is what needs to be examined. Calling it "drift" implies US helplessness, which is utterly absurd in the circumstances. If permitting this coup is Obama's policy--the direct opposite of what he has stated as his policy--we need to know and understand this. And if permitting this coup is NOT Obama's policy--if his policy has been sabotaged by John McCain and Puke moles at the Pentagon and State, or by Hillary Clinton--we need to know and understand it. The article obscures these vital questions, while urging US action NOW, long after the fact--and throwing in bogeyman Chavez probably because most Latin Americans are by now aware of the US game in Honduras, and that exposure (of US collusion and delaying tactics) bolsters democracy, independence from the US, arguments for economic integration and the movement against the new US military bases in Colombia.

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4. The Pentagon factor (also a black hole in this article)

President Zelaya proposed conversion of the US military based at Soto Cano to a commercial airport. He was not the first to propose this, but he was the most serious about it. Honduras doesn't have a good commercial airport. They need one. And most Latin Americans oppose US military presence in their countries.

Honduras is a strategically important US military asset, with a long history of being used as a "lily pad" country for US aggression in the region. It is the toilet that US-funded death squads crapped in, on their way to slaughtering teachers and mayors in Nicaragua and El Salvador in the 1980s. Sorry to put it so crudely, but that is the historical reality. Honduras has no significant resources of its own--oil, for instance. It is a steppingstone, which, combined with the seven-plus new US military bases in Colombia, and the recently reconstituted US 4th Fleet in the Caribbean, surrounds Venezuela's main oil reserves and facilities on Venezuela's Caribbean coast. Brazil's Lula da Silva has said that the US 4th Fleet is a threat to Brazil's oil. Everybody south of the border knows that it is a threat to Venezuela's. Further, like Venezuela's Chavez, Brazil's president plans to use profits from its oil fields to end poverty in Brazil--a major offense against US oil profiteers, who are bloated with oil profits as it is, and want more and more and more. And it is the new function of the US military to get it for them.

There is growing evidence that the Pentagon has a war plan to regain global corporate predator control of Venezuela's oil, of Ecuador's oil (adjacent to Colombia to the south), and any other oil they can grab in the process, including Brazil's recent new oil finds and Cuba's.

Retaining and securing their military base in Honduras is vitally important to any Pentagon war plan in the Caribbean, as well as being important to war profiteers of the failed, corrupt, murderous US "war on drugs." The Pentagon has lost its base, to public opinion, in Ecuador. It is being evicted this month--a pledge that Ecuador's President, Rafael Correa, made to the voters when he was running for president in 2006 (--and was elected by a big majority). Most Latin Americans oppose having the US military in their countries. It is a sovereignty issue. It is also a matter of their wanting a SANE drug policy, not a "war." Many oppose the militarization and nazification of their societies that US military funding and US bases encourage. And many see the US military as highly dangerous--which it most certainly is, since it just slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Iraq to steal their oil.

And it is not at all clear that Barack Obama has the power to enact his promised policy of peace, respect and cooperation in Latin America, if he is sincere in that policy. The Pentagon, or Bushwhack moles within the Pentagon, seem to have their own policy--of threatening, alarming and possibly even making war upon the people of Latin America, who, like the people of Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia, have dared to assert their right to control their own resources, their own land and their own fates.

This information is also lacking in this op-ed. There is not even a hint about the huge controversy in South America over the new US military bases in Colombia, with even the so-called "moderate" countries demanding an explanation and questioning US intentions. This is not a US vs bogeyman Chavez controversy. It is a concern of virtually all of Latin America's leaders and their peoples, and it combines with other evidence of US hostile intentions such as its failure to prevent the rightwing military coup in Honduras, and continued dallying two months later. Many Latin American leaders see the Honduran coup as a template for what the US intends to do to them. (Ecuador's President Rafael Correa said, "After Zelaya, I'm next.") It has nothing to do with Chavez except that he is one of the targets--one of the democratically elected leaders whom the US would very much like to remove, one way or another. It is completely distorted and unreal to make this "about Chavez." And it is completely distorted and unreal to underplay the importance of the US military base in Honduras, which did absolutely nothing while democracy was overturned in that country, by its "School of the Americas"-trained friends in the Honduran military.

The article merely mentions that the US has "600 troops"in Honduras. It fails to mention hardware--planes, helicopters, surveillance equipment, air traffic control, weapons--the commanders in charge, and the commanders in Washington. And it fails to mention SouthComm--the Pentagon's "Southern Command," with military bases, troops, pilots, planes, in other countries--and the US 4th Fleet in the Caribbean, which can commandeer navy ships as needed. "600 troops" sounds minimal. US military presence in Latin America is NOT minimal; it is big and it is well-coordinated. And what were they all doing while the US "client state" of Honduras lost its democracy?

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Good points about the article:

The article is not totally bad. It is certainly correct that the US should take strong and immediate action to restore democracy in Honduras. And I have to say that the writers HINT AT some of the realities that I have described. They may even mean to suggest that Pukes in Congress, the Pentagon and even Hillary Clinton are undermining Obama's stated policy in Latin America. But these are only hints--and their reason for wanting democracy restored in Honduras--so Hugo Chavez won't be seen as a defender of democracy--is so barmy as to call their other points into question. I like the strength of their assertion that democracy should be restored in Honduras--even if it requires a UN peacekeeping mission (which they don't think it will--guess why? The US could do it at any time!). But their contextualization of this laudable goal is--and there is no other word for it--disinformation. It is the USA and its client states in Latin America--Colombia, Peru and now Honduras--who are causing trouble, inflicting suffering, choosing militarism, shooting at peaceful protestors, killing people, violently repressing democracy and violating human rights, not Hugo Chavez.