Obama-Clinton: "Big Stick Policy" for Honduras and "Smiling Policy" for Cuba

The interventionist spirit of the recent Department of State's note on Honduras couldn't have been more brutal, being a typical example of the return of the "big stick policy"... against anti-Chavism, while a suicidal "smiling policy" is being implemented for the Latin American "axle of evil"

By Armando F. Valladares
September 8, 2009

On behalf of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, last September 3, the US Department of State released a note visibly aiming at hurting the temporary government of Honduras but which, as a matter of fact, intends to break the resistance of the heroic Honduran people in their fight for freedom. It is all about a note that at the same time reflects a not less deplorable pro-Chávez interventionism in the internal affairs of another country.

No more no less, it is the cruel application against Honduras -- a small Central America country, a traditional US ally -- of the "big stick policy", now under the hands of Kerenskynian president Obama, who at the same time implements a suicidal "smiling policy" towards totalitarian and populist leftist countries in the Americas, like Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua.

They are two weights and two measures of an injustice that cries out for God.

Days ago, president Obama had qualified as "hypocrites" those who just a while ago demanded the US not to intervene in Latin-American matters and are now begging the United States government to intervene in the case of Honduras. However, just a few days later president Obama surrendered before the Chavist "hypocriticaldictatorship", just like Kerensky surrendered before Lenin in the beginning of the twentieth century, which triggered the historical events that we all know. I have already had the chance to define, in a recent article, what I understand as "Obama Kerenskyism" and, in short, I refer it to my readers (see "Obama Kerenskyism, Honduras and the Chávez Abyss", Diario Las Américas, Miami, USA, July 24, 2009; El Heraldo, Tegucigalpa, Honduras, July 23, 2009; Destaque Internacional, Internet, July 21, 2009; a text reproduced in many languages, including Lithuanian, in more than 30 countries).

The Department of State's note announced the "termination of a broad range of assistance to the government of Honduras", with the alleged need for "strong measures" to break the "resistance" to the adoption of the "San Jose Accord" by the current Honduran authorities and for what is mentioned as "continuing failure to restore a democratic and constitutional rule to Honduras".

The interventionist spirit of the text couldn't have been more brutal, being a typical example of the return to the big stick policy diplomacy... against anti-Chavism. In fact, an "accord" means conformity of opinions between two or more people or institutions. If one intends to submit at any cost the institutions and the Honduran people, then let's not hypocritically call it an "accord" but rather an "imposition", a touch of "neocolonialism" or a ukase (from Russian, ukaz, that dictionaries translate for "despotic rule"). The Department of State's note says it is defending the "democratic" and "constitutional" Honduran system, but means to impose an "accord" which, in spite of carrying the name of that great saint that was Saint Joseph, would end up being a not too holy ukase and, without any doubt, quite little "democratic".

The US note tries to justify its interventionism by alleging the need of a "restoration" of the democratic rule, ignoring that the ousted president Zelaya had already damaged seriously that democratic rule through passing over the laws and the Constitution itself with the indifference of the Department of State, the OAS and the governments of the Americas which pharisaical tear down their gowns.

In the last Summit of the Americas, president Obama promised a "new beginning" for bloody Castro dictatorship; has extended bridges of dialogues with the totalitarian-populist regimes of Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia; has revealed its willing to talk with the most radical anti-US Islamic regimes and even with North Korea's tyrant; well, he has proclaimed to the four winds that "dialogue", not "imposition, is the very first and indispensable choice to solve international conflicts; and that the United States are defending multilateralism. However, when dealing with Honduras, the mellow language changes totally and becomes bitter, tasting bile, aggressive, prepotent and utterly interventionist.

On the following lines, maybe perceiving the breach of contradictions and fraud that they had opened, the writers of the Department of State's note adopt a tone of impartiality when saying they do "recognize" the "complicated nature" of the actions that took to the Zelaya ousting from power on June 28. Even so, those actions are solely liable and blamed to a "legislative branch", the "judicial branch" and to the "military", being silent on the very first and key responsibility of the "executive branch" headed by Zelaya.

In spite of that pretentious impartial tone, one commits the largest partiality when omitting a single allusion to the fact that in Honduras, on June 28, 2009, there also existed that "executive branch", and that heading it there was a "democratically elected" president, which is true, but who had clearly jeopardized the Constitution and the law, and was pushing Honduras on its path to the Chávez abyss.

We have to insist with an invariable objectivity, with the same proportion of the insisting partiality of the US note: it's the "executive branch", headed by president Zelaya, the great responsible for the existing Honduran crossroads, just like the Castro brothers are the great responsible for the Cuban drama, and Chávez is the great one to blame for the deterioration of freedom in Venezuela and in other countries of the region where he butts in, without the Department of State saying a word about it.

The unfortunate Department of State's note also refers to "complex factual and legal questions" which it does not care for defining or even clarifying. If those are really so "complex" matters, that is one more reason for defining them or at least clarifying them and then analyzing them properly before taking any measures which, in addition to being interventionists and big-sticking, are overhasty and unfair against sister Honduras.

Another evidence of the big stick policy and its unilateralism of this Department of State note is precisely the fact that it avoids the analysis of that "complication", washing its hands like Pilate.

Chances are the Department of State avoids talking on that "complication" because it's not good to do it: the word "complication", in the Department of State's note is an euphemism for not addressing the core theme, which is the huge responsibility of ousted president Zelaya, a Chavist in whom president Obama and Secretary of State Clinton are depositing their hopes.

It's a typical Kerensky salad, a scalawag one, which would rather give to avoid loosing, with which Zelaya is protected and acquitted, who, as said before, was truly "democratically elected" but who -- and it takes insisting wearily upon that, in the same way his defenders omit it, also wearily -- diverged from Honduras constitutional principles and laws.

Not less unfortunate is the fact that the Department of State, open for "new beginnings" with the most bloody Communist dictators and with radical Islamic despotic leaders, keeps on dialoguing with the current Honduran authorities and threatens not to "support" the "result" of the scheduled elections of that country.

It's rather explainable why, in view of what was mentioned, the greatest Latin American representative of the "axle of evil" and present president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, with crocodile tears has declared in Iran, where he had conspiracy meetings against the United States, that it "was time" for president Obama to take those measures, and stated his complacency with that unfortunate note of the Department of State, which in a good measure, is a fruit of his pressure and claims.

In that September 3 Department of State text, it remained open the pro-Chávez consent of the "executive branch" of the US government. So, it would be desirable that the "legislative branch" of that country, the House of Representatives and Senate, through their respective commissions of Foreign Relations, invited the representatives of the Department of State to explain the flagrant contradictions and omissions of this recent imbroglio. And also, to study the possibility of inviting their representative colleagues of the Honduran "legislative branch" to express their opinion, an elementary right of defense that the US government's "executive branch" is denying them.

The Department of State's interventionist policy in Honduras affairs must cease immediately. The United States Congress should also set up a meeting with the US ambassador to that country, Hugo Llorens, a moderate Cuban American, who was a high counsel of Secretary of State Condoleeeza Rice, but who is now a faithful and submitted defender of the ousted Chavist president. Among other questions, one could interrogate ambassador Llorens whether it is true or not that it was permitted to the wife of ousted president Zelaya to use the North-American diplomatic facilities for right there preaching in favor of disturbances and violence, while making us believe that he was resisting on the mountains. Congressmen could also invite Mrs. María Otero, a Hispanic from Bolivian origin and Bolivarian background, recently appointed Under Secretary of Global Affairs of the Department of State, to interrogate her whether or not she used a Department of State telephone to call Honduran businessmen, coercing and threatening them for their support to the current temporary government.

Proclaiming loud and clear the truth facts that hurt the contemporary Goliaths, with irrefutable arguments and evidence, in an invariably educated and respectful way, is the most effective manner to help up the small and heroic Honduran David, as well as the brother Latin-American peoples who suffer under the malign effects of Chavist "axle of evil".

Armando Valladares, former Cuban political prisoner, was the US ambassador with the United Nations Commission on Human Rights during the Reagan and Bush governments and was granted the Citizen's Presidential Medal and the Superior Award of the Department of State. Late July, in Italy, he was the first Hispanic honored with the distinguished Ischia International Award for Journalism.
 

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