Is Obama’s timidity in Honduras—only a symptom of a larger problem..like rookie jitters?
Why won’t President Obama call a spade a spade in Honduras…where in the early morning hours of June 28, 2009 a Honduran military detachment entered the president’s palace and unceremoniously roused the pajama-clad official, hustled him off to an airfield, where at gunpoint he was pushed into a small plane, only to dumped off at a short while later, at an isolated place in neighboring Ecuador. The Honduran military—aligned with right wing forces abroad and in the US-- then assigned the President’s palace to their hand-picked right-wing rubber-stamp, Signor Roberto Micheletti.
Since then Obama and Ms Hillary Clinton have only tentatively (and that is very tentatively) supported the unfortunate Zelaya with mild and well-chosen, (some would say too carefully chosen words). But their deeds clearly say something else. After four months, they finally have gotten around to freezing $38 million in humanitarian funds to Honduras and also revoked the visas of officials who were involved in the coup. But these actions are very small potatoes.
Why won’t President Obama call a spade a spade in Honduras…where in the early morning hours of June 28, 2009 a Honduran military detachment entered the president’s palace and unceremoniously roused the pajama-clad official, hustled him off to an airfield, where at gunpoint he was pushed into a small plane, only to dumped off at a short while later, at an isolated place in neighboring Ecuador. The Honduran military—aligned with right wing forces abroad and in the US-- then assigned the President’s palace to their hand-picked right-wing rubber-stamp, Signor Roberto Micheletti.
Since then Obama and Ms Hillary Clinton have only tentatively (and that is very tentatively) supported the unfortunate Zelaya with mild and well-chosen, (some would say too carefully chosen words). But their deeds clearly say something else. After four months, they finally have gotten around to freezing $38 million in humanitarian funds to Honduras and also revoked the visas of officials who were involved in the coup. But these actions are very small potatoes.
The determined right-wing elements in Honduras have not been frightened. They will try to play for time. President Obama and Ms Clinton must know that their modest fig-leaf actions will not change anything. To many, it is clear that is just what the Obama team wishes. Their goal is to keep the Republican minority in Congress happy. Yes that is the party which was so resoundingly defeated during the last election. Team Obama is willing to undermine our international respect for law and order to keep favor with the disgraced and unmanned Republicans.
They have also fallen back on methods used by the disgraced Bush regime. The Bush-Cheney penchant for of parsing and redefinitions –such as in the Bush-World’s redefinition of “torture” defined so that the CIA and Pentagon could do anything short of shearing off someone's head and could continue to refer to the action as "mild enhanced interrogation”.
In the case of the June 28, Honduran putsch, Obama has defined the overthrow in such as way that …though President Zelaya was man-handled and pushed around by Honduran uniformed military officers, then hustled off in a military plane, ---then twenty-four hours later, after he had a shave and threw on some borrowed clothes--as he and some supporters tried to reenter Honduras—he was faced with massed Honduran military at the border threatening to shoot if he were to step across. According to Obama the clearly military action…is not a military overthrow. Why? Because labeling it “military” would force some really effective economic and political measures that Obama would rather not have to authorize. (Please see Time Magazine’s more complete write up at: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1920725,00.html)
Obama has spoken forcefully and well about the Honduran coup, but he would rather do very little. Mr. Zelaya, a left-leaning Honduran who was attempting to liberalize his impoverished nation’s economy…and who is also an ally of the outspoken anti-US--Hugo Chavez—remains the only legally-elected President of that nation. Yet he remains an embarrassing refugee outside of Honduras.
They have also fallen back on methods used by the disgraced Bush regime. The Bush-Cheney penchant for of parsing and redefinitions –such as in the Bush-World’s redefinition of “torture” defined so that the CIA and Pentagon could do anything short of shearing off someone's head and could continue to refer to the action as "mild enhanced interrogation”.
In the case of the June 28, Honduran putsch, Obama has defined the overthrow in such as way that …though President Zelaya was man-handled and pushed around by Honduran uniformed military officers, then hustled off in a military plane, ---then twenty-four hours later, after he had a shave and threw on some borrowed clothes--as he and some supporters tried to reenter Honduras—he was faced with massed Honduran military at the border threatening to shoot if he were to step across. According to Obama the clearly military action…is not a military overthrow. Why? Because labeling it “military” would force some really effective economic and political measures that Obama would rather not have to authorize. (Please see Time Magazine’s more complete write up at: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1920725,00.html)
Obama has spoken forcefully and well about the Honduran coup, but he would rather do very little. Mr. Zelaya, a left-leaning Honduran who was attempting to liberalize his impoverished nation’s economy…and who is also an ally of the outspoken anti-US--Hugo Chavez—remains the only legally-elected President of that nation. Yet he remains an embarrassing refugee outside of Honduras.
Time Magazine calls Obama’s action a “mixed signal” and states: “When the military hauls away a democratically elected president, it's a military coup, period, regardless of who takes power afterward. It's a rule that needs to apply not just in Honduras, but whenever the U.S. has to take on coupsters.”
Time Magazine and this author ask: what impression does this give to other erstwhile military leaders in other South American nations? This author sees the Honduras situation as a paradigm of Obama’s last few months in office: crafting the good speech, delivering the words and then doing little afterward as follow-up.
Sidling away from tough issues because they might upset some element of Congress or the electorate is becoming all too common the hallmark of President Obama. He seems to actually want to hew to some middle line…as if there was one between the reactionary Republicans left in Congress. Republicans over the last few years have diverged so far right into their netherworld that finding a middle ground is tantamount to a cross-Pacific voyage. It is essentially impossible. It’s their way or the highway. So Obama has set himself an impossible task on that score.
I know it has been only nine months--but these months have been pregnant with problems and policy pronouncements. And here below are some others policy issues that seem to have the smell of Obama’s Honduran behavior—his resistance to take a firm stand.
Let’s take Afghanistan. Why won’t Obama stand up to his military? Doesn't he know he is the commander-in-chief? He should be telling his generals what he wants them to do….not the other way around. Just recently President Obama ordered 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, but a recent report leaked by his staff has suggested that he was “pressured” to do so by his generals. I hate to think that the man we elected President must go hat in hand to a general and ask permission. Such behavior has the scent of Tegucigalpa.
On August 26th the “new man” in Afghansitan, General Stanley McChrystal who is widely touted as a brilliant ‘whiz kid” full of new ideas, has promised the President a “new way to win” in Afghanistan by “persuading” the long-suffering Afghanis that the US invaders are “concerned about their welfare”. But within a few weeks after that announcement, reports have surfaced of two disastrous US military blunders.
The first blunder occurred on Friday (September 4th) when a German NATO officer in Kunduz province Afghanistan called in an aerial strike on two stolen tanker-trucks (stuck at river crossing). The stalled fuel tankers were quickly mobbed by local civilians (or invited by the Taliban) carrying empty gerry-cans all eager to get a windfall of free fuel-- when the USAF F15’s missile struck. The result was giant fireball and a holocaust of civilians.
The immediate US military response was "the F15 attack killed only 'insurgents' ( as in the past this mantra proved untrue as it did over the past dozen or so US attacks casuing some 1200 Afghan civilian deaths). Their knee-jerk position of "no civilians killed" soon proved untenable when the local hospitals reported a flood of burnt bodies and patients--men, women, and children with horrible burns. The French daily “Le Figaro” was one of the few journals to publish a wide-angle view of the attack-site, which clearly shows the entire area littered with shards of metal as well as the burned and charred containers and canisters of the unfortunate locals.
Two days later, on Sunday September 6, 2009, another embarrassing military action, (and breach of the Geneva Conventions) surfaced when Reuters reported that US troops had entered a Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA) hospital in Wardak south of Kabul, where they rampaged through the facility, tied up employees as well as families of patients, and forced staff and patients (as well as some in beds) out of their rooms in their futile search for possible “insurgents”. (http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE5850OH20090906?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews.
If these actions are any indication of how effective the new McChrystal polices are going to be, more than a month after the top general in Afghanistan ordered his command (on July 2, 2009) to “embrace the people” and “build governance capacity”-- his efforts will be in vain.
Sidling away from tough issues because they might upset some element of Congress or the electorate is becoming all too common the hallmark of President Obama. He seems to actually want to hew to some middle line…as if there was one between the reactionary Republicans left in Congress. Republicans over the last few years have diverged so far right into their netherworld that finding a middle ground is tantamount to a cross-Pacific voyage. It is essentially impossible. It’s their way or the highway. So Obama has set himself an impossible task on that score.
I know it has been only nine months--but these months have been pregnant with problems and policy pronouncements. And here below are some others policy issues that seem to have the smell of Obama’s Honduran behavior—his resistance to take a firm stand.
Let’s take Afghanistan. Why won’t Obama stand up to his military? Doesn't he know he is the commander-in-chief? He should be telling his generals what he wants them to do….not the other way around. Just recently President Obama ordered 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, but a recent report leaked by his staff has suggested that he was “pressured” to do so by his generals. I hate to think that the man we elected President must go hat in hand to a general and ask permission. Such behavior has the scent of Tegucigalpa.
On August 26th the “new man” in Afghansitan, General Stanley McChrystal who is widely touted as a brilliant ‘whiz kid” full of new ideas, has promised the President a “new way to win” in Afghanistan by “persuading” the long-suffering Afghanis that the US invaders are “concerned about their welfare”. But within a few weeks after that announcement, reports have surfaced of two disastrous US military blunders.
The first blunder occurred on Friday (September 4th) when a German NATO officer in Kunduz province Afghanistan called in an aerial strike on two stolen tanker-trucks (stuck at river crossing). The stalled fuel tankers were quickly mobbed by local civilians (or invited by the Taliban) carrying empty gerry-cans all eager to get a windfall of free fuel-- when the USAF F15’s missile struck. The result was giant fireball and a holocaust of civilians.
The immediate US military response was "the F15 attack killed only 'insurgents' ( as in the past this mantra proved untrue as it did over the past dozen or so US attacks casuing some 1200 Afghan civilian deaths). Their knee-jerk position of "no civilians killed" soon proved untenable when the local hospitals reported a flood of burnt bodies and patients--men, women, and children with horrible burns. The French daily “Le Figaro” was one of the few journals to publish a wide-angle view of the attack-site, which clearly shows the entire area littered with shards of metal as well as the burned and charred containers and canisters of the unfortunate locals.
Two days later, on Sunday September 6, 2009, another embarrassing military action, (and breach of the Geneva Conventions) surfaced when Reuters reported that US troops had entered a Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA) hospital in Wardak south of Kabul, where they rampaged through the facility, tied up employees as well as families of patients, and forced staff and patients (as well as some in beds) out of their rooms in their futile search for possible “insurgents”. (http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE5850OH20090906?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews.
If these actions are any indication of how effective the new McChrystal polices are going to be, more than a month after the top general in Afghanistan ordered his command (on July 2, 2009) to “embrace the people” and “build governance capacity”-- his efforts will be in vain.
These two events suggest that in spite of McChrystal's new plan--now a full month in force-- the US forces remain unaware, unconcerned, and uninformed.
Other NATO forces consider the Americans "trigger-happy" and unsympathetic. If that characterization is false--these recent acts have not disproved them. Obviously these actions are not going to win us any Afghan friends and change the situation on the ground where perhaps more young Americans will die as a result.
These two stories only underscore the unfortunate truism that the military is a very blunt and unpredictable tool of foreign policy which should be used very sparingly, if at all, and then only when a nation’s survival is actually threatened. Obama does not want to step up to the plate and call for a retreat from Afghanistan. And he does not want to send more troops. I'm getting the scent of old Comayaguela.
In a recent piece in Time Magazine, columnist Joe Klein, took Obama to task for his tendency to “over-learn the lessons of past presidencies"—especially when such lessons permit the president to “avoid taking responsibility for hard decisions” See “Rookie Mistakes” http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1920050,00.html (downloaded September 6, 2009).
Klein lists several of what he considers Obama’s rookie mistakes. Such as not taking responsibility for a health-care plan, by deferring it to Congress, so now it is a badly muddled mess. He let AG Eric Holder run the game plan on whether to investigate the CIA for torture abuses, another serious deferral of responsibility Klein sees as a rookie mistake, but I might call “Honduran behavior”. In that case the President didn’t step up to the plate and make a decision one way or another. He did say he would not want to look back…but then he let Holder do it. I call that "Honduran" behavior. The result is a CIA investigation that is so limited and so meaningless, that according to Joe Klein, Holder might be faced with prosecuting one agent for threatening a prisoner with an electric drill and let off another who waterboarded a man 83 times! While the real miscreants who were responsible—Mr. Yoo and others-- and in the White House--Cheney and Bush-- are of course off Scott free.
But in his closing remarks Joe Klein is optimistic:
"In the great sweep of history, this presidency has barely begun. The mistakes Obama has made are rookie mistakes that can be corrected. And the general tendency of his Administration — toward civility, as opposed to the ugliness we've seen in the past month — is the right one. But he can't allow his desire for civility to neuter the requirements of leadership. He has to lead, clearly and decisively, starting right now. "
I agree...we need a change...right now.
These two stories only underscore the unfortunate truism that the military is a very blunt and unpredictable tool of foreign policy which should be used very sparingly, if at all, and then only when a nation’s survival is actually threatened. Obama does not want to step up to the plate and call for a retreat from Afghanistan. And he does not want to send more troops. I'm getting the scent of old Comayaguela.
In a recent piece in Time Magazine, columnist Joe Klein, took Obama to task for his tendency to “over-learn the lessons of past presidencies"—especially when such lessons permit the president to “avoid taking responsibility for hard decisions” See “Rookie Mistakes” http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1920050,00.html (downloaded September 6, 2009).
Klein lists several of what he considers Obama’s rookie mistakes. Such as not taking responsibility for a health-care plan, by deferring it to Congress, so now it is a badly muddled mess. He let AG Eric Holder run the game plan on whether to investigate the CIA for torture abuses, another serious deferral of responsibility Klein sees as a rookie mistake, but I might call “Honduran behavior”. In that case the President didn’t step up to the plate and make a decision one way or another. He did say he would not want to look back…but then he let Holder do it. I call that "Honduran" behavior. The result is a CIA investigation that is so limited and so meaningless, that according to Joe Klein, Holder might be faced with prosecuting one agent for threatening a prisoner with an electric drill and let off another who waterboarded a man 83 times! While the real miscreants who were responsible—Mr. Yoo and others-- and in the White House--Cheney and Bush-- are of course off Scott free.
But in his closing remarks Joe Klein is optimistic:
"In the great sweep of history, this presidency has barely begun. The mistakes Obama has made are rookie mistakes that can be corrected. And the general tendency of his Administration — toward civility, as opposed to the ugliness we've seen in the past month — is the right one. But he can't allow his desire for civility to neuter the requirements of leadership. He has to lead, clearly and decisively, starting right now. "
I agree...we need a change...right now.
Get the picture now?
rjk
rjk
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