It is bizarre that the official US position about Honduras’ current political situation is to condemn the people who resisted an illegal takeover of Honduras by a wanna-be dictator for life.
The way in which nearly all the world’s media portray the legal, Supreme Court-ordered ouster of President Manuel (Mel) Zelaya is one major reason for the universal opprobrium. Because military men took part in the deportation of the sitting president, it has been portrayed as a classic Latin American “military coup,” and who can support a military coup?
The lack of context in which this ouster took place has prevented the vast majority of the world’s news watchers and readers from understanding what has happened.
I wonder how many people who bother to read the news — as opposed to only listen to or watch news reports — know:
— Zelaya was plotting a long-term, possibly lifetime, takeover of the Honduran government through illegally changing the Honduran Constitution.
— Zelaya had personally led a mob attack on a military facility to steal phony “referendum” ballots that had been printed by the Venezuelan government.
— Weeks earlier, in an attempt to intimidate the Honduran attorney general — as reported by The Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady, one of the only journalists in the world who regularly reports the whole story about Honduras — “some 100 agitators, wielding machetes, descended on the attorney general’s office. ‘We have come to defend this country’s second founding,’ the group’s leader reportedly said. ‘If we are denied it, we will resort to national insurrection.'”
— No member of the military has assumed a position of power as a result of the “military coup.”
— Zelaya’s own party, the Liberal Party, supported his removal from office and deportation from Honduras.
— The Liberal Party still governs Honduras.
So, Dennis Prager has asked you, did you know those things? If you didn’t, and you’ve been watching/reading the news, you’ll have to ask yourself why didn’t you know them. Hopefully you’ll come to the correct conclusion about the slant of US major media, which never saw a left-socialist South American dictator it didn’t like.
As we’ve commented here before, the actions of the Honduran military were legal, and supported by the Honduran Supreme Court AND by the political party of the Zelaya himself.
I have absolutely no idea what’s behind Obama’s support of Zelaya… except that maybe he recognizes a fellow traveler.
