Honduras, bottom line
Conn Hallinan in Counterpunch synthesizes much of what’s been written about Honduras over the last month (and more) to clarify the United States based backing of this coup, and the reasons behind the Obama administration’s dithering over definitions accepted as a given by the rest of the world.
Robert White, former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador and current president of the Center for International Policy… says the coup had more to do with profits than law.
“Coups happen because very wealthy people want them and help to make them happen, people who are used to seeing the country as a money machine and suddenly see social legislation on behalf of the poor as a threat to their interests,” says White. “The average wage of a worker in free trade zones is 77 cents per hour.”
…
The U.S. is also involved in the coup through a network of agencies that funnel money and training to anti-government groups. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) contribute to right-wing organizations that supported the coup, including the Peace and Democracy Movement and the Civil Democratic Union. Many of the officers that bundled Zelaya off to San Jose were trained at the Western Hemispheric Institute for Security Cooperation, the former “School for the Americas’ that has seen torturers and coup leaders from all over Latin America pass through its doors. Reich served on the Institute’s board.
mexfiles.net 
It would be nice to see some real evidence that USAID has made donations to pro-coup organizations with the intent of supporting a coup against Zelaya. Funny, I can’t find evidence of this.
It’s kind of amusing to see how disappointed you guys seem to be that US isn’t supporting the coup. It seems to be driving you crazy. It’s almost as though you would feel better if Obama were following the Reagan script. But he’s not, and you don’t seem to be able to deal with that.
Which is sad.
Who are “you guys”? Outside of a few tourism writers, none of “us guys” who comment on Latin American political developments see this as anything but a disaster.
I’ve been very clear in the several years I’ve written this site that U.S. intervention has unintended results, and has since the U.S. first began intervening in Latin America during the Monroe Administration.
What I notice is that U.S. government agencies, and officials, have invested heavily in Honduras, and — unlike their homologues on the rest of the planet — continue to waffle in their response to the imposition of an illegitimate government, tacitly legitimizing it.
I can’t speak for the former Ambassador, nor for Mr. Hallinan, but the latter only says that USAID providing funding for organizations with a political agenda that is supportive of the golpistas.
Well, come on Rich, let’s look at your record on this issue. You flat out declared that the US supported the coup, until I pointed out to you Obama’s public condemnation of the coup as a coup. Then you backpedalled and said, “Yeah, well it took him a week to do it!”. I then pointed out he had condemned the coup as a coup within 24 hours of the coup.
Later on you published commentary from one of your sources to the effect that the US condemnation of the coup was purely cosmetic, because not concrete steps had been taken against the coup plotters, like suspending visas and the like. I then had to point out that the US had done just that the week previously.
Do you see a pattern here? I do. One think I know about you from reading your blog is that you have no problem doing thorough, exhaustive research…when it suits you. So the fact that you have been so spectacularly wrong about the US gov’s response to the coup at every stage in the game can only be explained by some other means.
The only thing I can think of is that you know how to respond to an interventionist, right-wing US government, but that you are at a loss at what to say and do when the US government is doing what you always wanted it to do.
You are, of course, echoing Mr. Obama’s comments from today. And, be real: whether I like it or not, the United States is the big dog in the Americas. It’s all to the good that the Obama Administration thinks before it acts, but there are automatic procedures in place for dealing with coups… none of which were followed.
One has to ask when military and other assistance from the United States was cut; whether or not the U.S. Air Force is still in Honduras; when Honduran assets in the United States were seized; when the U.S. Embassy withdrew its recognition of the Honduran government.
BTW, it’s a little offensive to suggest I “want” a Reagan-era coup — which this was. I have friends who were killed in Central America as a result of those events, and friends whose safety and security is very much at risk because the United States has dragged its feet in responding to the coup.
You’re not addressing my issues, Rich. I have presented three concrete instances where you willfully disregarded and misrepresented the US response to the Coup, even though the truth was widely publicized and well-known.
Why is that?
24 hours are an awfully long time, you know? Particularly when practically everybody else with interests in the region (save Mexico and Colombia, wonder why) were condemning the coup -and calling it a coup- within 2-3 hours.
Manuel Zelaya declared this week that if the US wanted to, they could end the mess in 5 minutes. It’s true, so why don’t they?
@Mr. Grabman, thanks for your work.
OK, so now waiting 24 hours to be sure of your facts and the situation isn’t enough. You guys just make me laugh.
You are looking for any reason, however flimsy, to deny that the Obama administration swiftly condemned the coup as a coup. I’m sure if Obama had waited an hour, that would have been too slow.
Obama is a prudent man, and his administration I’m sure felt they needed to be absolutely certain of the situation in Honduras before making hard and fast statements. That’s just a basic part of diplomacy.
None of this changes the fact that Rich claimed the US had waited a week, when in fact it had only waited a day, and this is something he could easily have found out had he wanted.
It’s clear he wanted the US to have waited a long time, so that he could condemn it.
Anyway, feel free to go on being embarrassingly wrong about the facts. That will only build your credibility, I’m sure.
“It would be nice to see some real evidence that USAID has made donations to pro-coup organizations with the intent of supporting a coup against Zelaya. Funny, I can’t find evidence of this.”
That’s because you’re not looking. The evidence is right there in the final paragraph of the piece. It’s not Richard’s fault that you either (a) need new glasses, or (b) have extremely poor reading comprehension.
“OK, so now waiting 24 hours to be sure of your facts and the situation isn’t enough. You guys just make me laugh.”
Who the hell needs 24 hours to know that a bunch of businessmen and generals taking a legitimately elected leader, shoving him onto a plane in his pajamas, and installing an ’80s human-rights abuser in his place, constitutes an unacceptable and antidemocratic move? It wouldn’t take me 24 seconds to figure out that THAT was a coup.
Sheesh.