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  President Obama: It’s harder to lose face when you have two of them
After a meeting of the Three Amigos (President Obama, President Calderon of Mexico and Prime Minister Harper of Canada) in Guadalajara, Mexico on Monday, August 10th, President Obama hit back at critics who say the U.S. not doing enough for Honduras. "The same critics who say that the United States has not intervened enough in Honduras are the same people who say that we're always intervening and the Yankees need to get out of Latin America. If these critics think that it's appropriate for us to suddenly act in ways that in every other context they consider inappropriate, then I think what that indicates is that maybe there's some hypocrisy involved in their—their approach to U.S.-Latin American relations." Barack Obama The president said the U.S. has done everything it could, including condemning the coup and calling for an immediate reinstating of President Zelaya. It is getting so one can more and more count on Obama to make exactly the wrong decision whenever matters of change from the failed policies of the past are in question. In Obama’s accusing his progressive base of hypocrisy, this might be appropriately called a case of the pot calling the kettle black except that the blackness resides solely in the hypocritical pot here. Note: The black referred to here is not a racist reference to the color of the President’s skin but to the content of his character. A couple of very disturbing things surfaced in Obama’s comments on Monday. First is the fact that his critics are not calling for any military intervention in Honduras as I assume Obama is implying. His critics are actually calling for the opposite—a withdrawal of economic “intervention” in the form of our legally mandated withholding of economic and military aid that is sustaining the illegal coup leaders. This aid is a kind of de facto validation for these criminals. I suspect that Obama’s hypocrisy over this issue may have a lot to do with Clintonista sophist, Lanny Davis who has been hired by the coup-supporting Honduran business interests to powerfully defend the indefensible. As if to add further insult to injury, Obama is covertly assisting the illegal regime by training Honduran military personnel at the infamous School of the Americas, stateside at Fort Benning Georgia. Some of the present coup leaders and advisors were trained at the infamous SOA (now renamed by the far more Orwellian sounding and harder to remember, “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.”) Members of the Honduran military are currently enrolled there as I write. Why has Obama not closed this terrorist training center? “General Lee Rials who is a public affairs officer for WHINSEC (School of the Americas) and a frequent commenter on SOA articles even admitted that Honduran officers were still being trained at the school in Ft. Benning, Georgia. The general who led the coup on democratically elected president Zelaya of Honduras was Romeo Orlando Vásquez . Vásquez was trained at the School of the Americas.” Chris Steele, Denver Progressive Examiner I close with perhaps the most eloquent indictment of Barack Obama by Laura Carlsen, Director of the Americas Policy Program of the Center for International Policy in an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! “I was shocked and insulted at that statement, as one of those people who’s been calling for stronger statements—sanctions from the United States. It was a snide and petty remark. And besides that, it’s just not accurate. Intervention is when you get involved in external (sic?) affairs. What we’ve been calling for is for the United States to do exactly as the European Union and other countries across the world have done, which is to apply the sanctions that are called for in US legislation to cut off aid to an illegal military coup, or also to withdraw an ambassador who no longer has a valid counterpart in the country. So that’s not intervention. The Organization of American States, the United Nations, every nation in the world—are saying, ‘We’re doing our part. We need the United States to stop aid to this coup, so that we can finally restore democracy in the country.’ And this comment didn’t help.” Laura Carlsen, Director of the Mexico City-based Americas Policy Program of the Center for International Policy. (Democracy Now! Interview—excerpted.)
 Robert Boldt an editor of MWC News, is a freelance film/video producer living in Jefferson City, Missouri. He is active in local politics, worked on the Howard Dean and John Kerry campaigns and is a cofounder of The White Rose Collective. Articles by Bob Boldt at MWC News http://mwcnews.net/bob-boldt |
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