The American Spectator : He's Zelaya and a Cheat

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He's Zelaya and a Cheat

By Jay D. Homnick on 7.6.09 @ 6:07AM

What does Obama know anyway, about Honduras or even Iran circa 1954?

If you are stunned at the response of the United States to the scenario in Honduras, we are here today to help you understand. Logic does not apply in this case, making it necessary to explore cultural clues rather than intellectual ideas.

The facts are fairly straightforward. Honduras has constitutional term limits, one four-year term per President. The last election, in 2006, was won by Mister Zelaya. In a quest to extend his reign beyond 2010, he advanced a referendum to change the law. The Supreme Court of Honduras ruled such a vote would be unconstitutional, as the constitution cannot be amended by this process. Zelaya refused to accept their ruling. They instructed the military to arrest him and deport him. The Honduran Congress picked his successor from his own party. The successor is only interim President until the close of Zelaya's term.

Obama has condemned the process as undemocratic, and demanded the reinstatement of Zelaya under threat of sanctions. In none of his public utterances on the subject has he acknowledged the verdict of the Honduran Supreme Court. More amazingly, no American envoy of any kind has made any effort to have a discussion on the subject with the Court, the Congress, or the new President. This behavior is purportedly an effort to save democracy.

To get a handle on this, I suggest we return to the notorious Cairo speech by our President. In that address he assayed an apology for the untoward CIA role in deposing President Mossadegh of Iran in 1953 and replacing him with General Zahedi, who was friendlier to the Shah. There ensued a debate between right and left if it was appropriate for later Presidents to issue condemnations of earlier administrations. What no one remembered to ask was this: who told Obama the CIA toppled Mossadegh?

We all heard about the CIA papers Leon Panetta provided to the White House and Congress about the extent of briefings to Nancy Pelosi about waterboarding. Yet we never heard that Obama had requested files about Mossadegh. Even Bill Clinton thought to ask Webster Hubbell to check archives in Justice to see if any goodies lurked about the Kennedy assassination or aliens in Roswell, New Mexico. Barack Obama does not need to ask; he knows.

How does he know? The accusations of a CIA role in Iran's coup of 56 years ago are vague, mostly based on anonymous leaks by retired agents to New York Times reporters. There is no definitive evidence of this, and even if individual CIA guys claim to have moved mountains with their machinations, the odds are that those are mostly cocktail-party bravado. A dose of healthy skepticism would seem to be the sensible thing. It might be worth reading the website maintained by Zahedi's son, where he makes a strong case against this conventional wisdom.

It is not important here to get into this Iranian debate. My point is that Obama has no way of knowing the truth any more than you or I do. His apology was not based on research or government Eyes-Only files. It was based on standard collegiate peacenik rhetoric, nothing more profound or more complicated. Scowling professorial types in faculty lounges have been grumbling about this for half a century, and that is good enough for our commander-in-chief.

Which brings us to the oldiest, rustiest saw of all, the story of the CIA and Salvador Allende in Chile. Anyone who wears his quiver on the left reaches for this arrow first. I shudder to recall innumerable tiresome lectures about the horror of the CIA unseating of Allende, always with a supercilious flourish in pronouncing his name I-end-ay. Somehow the supposal of CIA disposal in the Allende deposal trumps any alternate proposal. The many wonderful articles in these pages by James Whelan debunking most of this bunk are either ignored or derided.

So for Obama there is no choice based on realpolitik, pragmatism, common sense or justice. The bottom line is Allende is back in the person of Zelaya. Right, wrong or indifferent, this crowd cannot leave a legacy evoking the ghost of Allende.

Funnily enough, the Honduran Foreign Minister thought to bolster the case against Zelaya by mentioning his complicity in drug-running. Oops! Now we are channeling Noriega.

But there is hope yet of turning Obama around on this one. If only we can figure a way of comparing Zelaya to Ferdinand Marcos or the Shah or Botha or Pinochet or even Jerry Falwell…

topics:
Iran, CIA, Honduras

About the Author

Jay D. Homnick, commentator and humorist, is a frequent contributor to The American Spectator. He also writes for Human Events. Here he performs his original composition, "Buy You (Bayou) a Drink".

Letter to the Editor View all comments (22) | Leave a comment

Ryan| 7.6.09 @ 8:17AM

The lack of a case in favor of Zelaya is astounding, but the left (outside of the ones in the Honduras) is maintaining that he is somehow still legitimate. I haven't yet seen a reasoned argument why he should still be in power.

The support of the crazy leftists, led by Chavez, is a good indicator that the Hondurans mostly did the right thing.

KyMouse| 7.6.09 @ 8:17AM

Mr. Mills, are the obscene and bigoted words with which you express your ideas the closest you can come to intelligent discourse? How sad for you.

Mike| 7.6.09 @ 9:32AM

To answer the questions in the sub-title to your article , Mr. Homrick: a great deal more than most American citizens and, for sure, far, far more than Sarah Palin. This is not a gratuitous swipe but I wonder if Ms. Palin could locate Honduras on a map. If not she would be no different from the majority of her fellow citizens.

John Navratil| 7.6.09 @ 9:43AM

This is an interesting link explaining the anti-Zelaya position...

http://www.laverdadenhonduras.com/

The text is the communique from the Honduran Congress. In the first comment below it there is an embedded you-tube video which neatly captures the history leading up to Zelaya's removal.

S in Severn| 7.6.09 @ 9:43AM

America, wake-up! Do we have the backbone to eject an illegitimate President as our neighbor Honduras did? Their Constitution had LIMITS that this person ignored. It was their Courts and Legislature that TOGETHER under their legitimate authority ordered their Armed Forces to remove from the Country this "wanna-be" dictator.

With all the voting abuses and voter fraud, don't be too surprised if it happens here. Don't say it can't happen. Look at what has happened to Wall Street, to the automotive industry, what is happening to our electrical utilities right now.

J.C.Eaton| 7.6.09 @ 10:46AM

Tell me Mike: Not to take a gratuitous swipe, but does congenital witlessness run in your family?

WillaimInWien| 7.6.09 @ 11:17AM

Generally, I read the comments, that a particular article generates, from other readers. There is always another point of view on any subject and I attempt to be open to various opinions. One response I cannot understand is the type offered by "paul mills". Thank goodness there are others that are capable of expressing a complete thought and position (on an article) in as little as one to three sentences! Please, carry on!

Aaron| 7.6.09 @ 11:20AM

Great article Mr. Homnick, "Oops! Now we are channeling Noriega." Best line of the day.

And Mike, I'll take the gratuitous swipe... Your assumptions about Governor Palin and the majority of American people are based on your own ego driven superiority complex.

fundamentalist| 7.6.09 @ 1:16PM

The left and the mainstream media don't like the decision of the court in Honduras because they worship democracy, as if the will of the majority somehow is sacred and sanctified. However, the Honduran government is trying to enforce the rule of law, not the will of the majority. The left and the MM don't understand the rule of law and wouldn't care for it if they did. All that matters is the will of the majority. But under the rule of law, the law trumps the will of the majority.

As for the Mossadegh in Iran 1954, you need to read Amir Taheri's lates book, "Persian Night." He has a chapter on the alleged overthrow of Mossadegh. According to Taheri, the CIA and MI5 were little more than Keystone cops. The Iranian Constitution gave the Shah the legal authority to fire the prime minister. Mossadegh had dismissed parliament and was ruling by dictate. He was also flirting with the USSR. The Shah eventually fired Mossadegh, but only after receiving assurances from Eisenhower that the US would not let the USSR used that as an excuse to invade Iran. The CIA had nothing to do with the firing of Mossadegh and the Shah's action was perfectly legal under the constitution. The left promotes the fiction that the CIA orchestrated a coup because, again, they hate the rule of law. The will of the majority is all that matters to them, even when the majority acts illegally and against their own constitution.

tj| 7.6.09 @ 5:54PM

If Zelaya returns, Honduras should try him for treason, execute him and tell Obama and Chavez where to stick it.

Thom| 7.6.09 @ 6:46PM

Taken at face value and assuming everything said about Zelaya’s actions are true he pretty much committed a pretty blatant unconstitutional act against that and the people of Honduras. In most of that part of the world you don’t get a free pass out of the country and for sure someone of your party isn’t picked as your successor without a lot of blood running in the streets. That all the Marxist government of Central, South America and our own are backing Zelaya is of no surprise but it is a little blatant for ours to be so bold as to back the man trying to overthrow both the rule of law and the Constitution. Doesn’t speak well for our future it would seem since the Constitution and Rule of Law don’t mean much here either.

Marc Jeric| 7.6.09 @ 7:45PM

One fact suffices: ballots to give dictator power to Zelaya were printed secretely by Chavez in Venezuela and were secretely delivered to a warehouse in Tegucigalpa.

G. A. Kevis| 7.7.09 @ 8:03AM

Remind us again, please, that BHO was a
constitutional law pro-fessor. Without
a publicly obtainable collegiate paper trail
to expose his sour thought processes on
Americas' Constitutional perrenial freedom
based underpinnings.

No wonder BHO is valiantly at ease in
giving a pass to Iranian suppression of
freedoms while souring over the exhibition
of Honduran constitutional expressions of
not yearning to go the way of totalitarianism -
i.e. Big Brotherism i.e. Police State etc.

Richard Baker| 7.7.09 @ 8:40AM

Verily, the Kenyan seems to favor every dictatorial thug he can find. This guy is going to make Carter look less and less foolish as time passes. Remember the old saying "Birds of a feather stick together"? The Kenyan is also one of those who believe "Don't confuse me with the facts. I know what I know". Forsooth!

Grzmlyk| 7.7.09 @ 12:57PM

Mike: Like all liberals, your disingenuousness is matched only by your blind loyalty.

If that's not a gratuitous swipe, what, pray tell, would a gratuitous swipe look like? No doubt your other posts will provide innumerable examples.

I wonder if YOU could find Honduras on a map. I grant you that you're at a disadvantage:

You know, what with your head so far up Obama's ass and all.

Bob Dobbs| 7.7.09 @ 5:27PM

There is no way to determine how Obama was informed for the 1953 overthrow of Mossadegh, but there are many once-secret documents from Operation Ajax on Iran that have been declassified that tell the complete story.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/

zczczc| 7.7.09 @ 10:33PM

Wondering if anyone could refute the information (from the website) from Bob Dobbs regarding the archives from the National Security Archive. I don't have any allegiance to Obama, the left, or the right, but it seems the above article needed some revision.

If the National Archives website wasn't enough, there's other evidence, even if it's not spelled out clear enough for Mr. Homnick: there was a military show of force by the British navy (America's "lapdog," with British influence lessening in the Middle East after WWII until the U.S. became a major funder of repressive governments a much greater scale than Britain), followed by international economic blockage/boycott, and freezing of Iranian assets. And the evidence of the coup comes not just from "anonymous leaks by retired agents to New York Times reporters."

I'm sure Fazlollah Zahedi's son can defend his father, but Gen. Zahedi was imprisoned/exiled during WWII by the British for collaboration with the Nazis.

Lastly, look at what happened after Mossadegh was gone: the Shah became the United States' best ally in the Third World (and Saddam Hussein, Saudi Arabia, etc. would help out too), one year after the coup, the Iranian government gave American/British (40% to each) oil firms exclusive rights to their oil, K. Roosevelt, Jr. then received a job working for one of the American oil firms profiting from the Shah's power, and the Iranian people had to deal with the Iranian secret police--SAVAK--created with the help of Israel/America.

I agree with Mr. Homnick: "A dose of healthy skepticism would seem to be the sensible thing," especially when it comes to taking a look in the mirror at American foreign policy and those defending it.

zczczc| 7.8.09 @ 1:00AM

To comment on the statement: "as if the will of the majority somehow is sacred and sanctified": the opposite stated by the writer is simply to follow "the rule of law." This is ridiculously simplistic. To do a thought experiment, if the rule of law in a country allows for the eventual removal of all Jews (as the Nuremberg Race Laws did in Germany in 1935), and I fight against this, does this mean it's "perfectly legal" to enforce the law? Or take racist laws in American history. Should the people have accepted these? Should African-Americans just have accepted being 3/5ths of a person or having been second-class citizens?

Also, it says "According to Taheri, the CIA and MI5 were little more than Keystone cops." Does one really think the most powerful country in the nation (the U.S.) and its "lieutenant" (Britain) would really allow a country with rich oil reserves to go on its own? If they were "Keystone cops," why was there so much money given?

As far as "debunking" the U.S. role in ousting Allende, and thinking about the "alternative proposal," it might be useful to look through the evidence (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/latin_america/guatemala.html, as well as "Shattered Hope", by Piero Gleijeses, and "U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, Interim Report, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975, section IIIF").

Lastly, James Whelan admits that Eisenhower and the Kennedy brothers waged a terrorist war against Castro with CIA's help. Does anyone really think the U.S. had any qualms about a terrorist war on a poor Third World country like Guatemala? A look at the documentary record proves the U.S. allows democracy when it suits power interests in the U.S.

zczczc| 7.9.09 @ 7:50PM

To add to the overthrow of Chile in 1973, even better evidence would be at http://ragno.imag.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/latin_america/chile.htm. The other website and material listed in the 1:00 comment is to show what the U.S. did in 1954, and can be used to show a pattern that leads right up through today (and the overthrow of Chile).

Richard Baker| 7.11.09 @ 4:27PM

I'd like to ask: just what is so bad about ridding a country of tyrants and dictators? Some of you liberal "thinkers" need to read Mr. Jefferson's thoughts on that subject in the Declaration of Independence. "Abuses and usurpations" are listed therein, among many other eternal ideas.

zczczc| 7.13.09 @ 7:27PM

I agree: it's a good thing to rid "a country of tyrants and dictators." Unfortunately, Mr. Baker must not have read the above posts or looked at the documentary record. The U.S. has supported many tyrants/dictators, and the evidence is clear no matter if you're a "liberal" thinker or "right-wing" thinker.

Also, one might learn a lot about the U.S. if they were to study the history of Mr. Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution.

If one were to look at George Mason's declaration of rights and principles of government (a document Jefferson borrowed from when writing the Declaration of Independence) for Virginia, it was not popular due to its unfavorable reaction among Virginia slaveholders (Jefferson being one of them) and the south in general. Jefferson had to change the wording when writing his declaration so not to allow any possible reference to giving slaves any rights. There's a good argument that says the American Revolution was mainly due to America's fear of losing its domination of slaves (due to the Somerset case of 1772).

As many positive claims one could make for the Declaration and Constitution, one could easily see they secure certain "Abuses and usurpations."