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
