Was it really a coup? Obama has no clue

July 2, 11:59 AMOrlando Republican ExaminerBlas Padrino

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The latest events concerning the political situation in Honduras confirm my analysis that President Obama made a huge foreign policy blunder. Against all common sense, he followed the lead of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and condemned the removal of Mel Zelaya from the Honduran presidency, calling it ‘an illegal military coup.’ At the time, I warned that he was making a premature and uninformed decision that could only lead to embarrassment for the United States and encouragement for Chavez.
Other voices in government gave similar warnings, most notably Florida Senator Mel Martinez and, more recently, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Miami. Notably, Florida’s other Senator, Bill Nelson, has made no comment on the matter and failed to respond to my request for his views on the subject. Now, it is becoming clear that, for all the noise that came out of the Organization of American States and the United Nations General Assembly, no action of any significance will be taken against Honduras.
Since I have reported on the events that led to the removal of Mr. Zelaya and on the legal basis for the actions of the Honduran Congress and Supreme Court, I will not repeat them here. Links to those reports appear at the bottom of this column. What is becoming very clear is that Latin America is not quite as united or insistent in the restoration of Mr. Zelaya to the Honduran presidency, that the new Honduran government is not as isolated as the mainstream U.S. press reports and that, even the Obama administration is having second thoughts on its policy.
These are some of the most recent developments on the Honduran crisis:

• • Guatemala, Honduras’ northern neighbor, has reopened their common border to commercial traffic. Meanwhile, trade and manufacturing groups throughout Central America are asking southern neighbors Nicaragua and El Salvador to follow suit. The closing of the border with the last two countries hurts the latter more than it does Honduras because it blocks the overland exchange of goods between Nicaragua and El Salvador at one end and the U.S. at the other.
• • Yesterday, Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe spoke in opposition to foreign intervention in Hunduras’ internal affairs. Today, the President of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias said that Mel Zelaya should not attempt to return to Honduras, as the ex-President had planned.
• • Both the nations of the European Union, as well as the United States have decided to keep their ambassadors in Honduras. Meanwhile, the Honduran Ambassador to the United States Roberto Flores Bermudez denied that the removal of Mel Zelaya constituted a coup d’état.
• • Demonstrations in support of the removal of Mel Zelaya continue throughout Honduras, drawing thousands of people.

In view of the latest developments, the Obama administration is beginning to backpedal. The State Department issued a statement late yesterday that flatly contradicts Mr. Obama’s original assessment of the Honduran crisis. The Associated Press gave the following version of remarks by State Department spokesman Ian C. Kelly on the question of whether the U.S. would cut aid to Honduras:
 

Kelly said the administration was still studying whether the forced removal of Zelaya was a military coup in a legal sense that would trigger a cutoff or suspension of American financial assistance.
"Our legal advisers are actively assessing the facts and the law in question, which we take very seriously," Kelly said.” (emphasis added).
 

From these remarks, it is clear that when President Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Zelaya’s removal an illegal military coup, they did it either without seeking the opinion of the Administration’s experts in the matter, or in blatant disregard thereof. In either case, this episode has turned into a major embarrassment for the President. Given his inclination to apologize to the world for alleged American errors he attributes to other administrations, it is time he manned up and apologized to the people of Honduras for his own rash statements.

Hondurans demonstrate against Zelaya's return in front of their country's Consulate in Miami:

 (Above right: Hondurans march in support of Micheletti government in La Ceiba, Honduras)

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