In one of Clint Eastwood’s finest movies of the Western genre, 'The Outlaw Josey

Wales' (1976) the character 'Fletcher’ has a memorable line: “Senator: Don’t piss
down my back and tell me it’s raining.”

The events following the 28 June coup in Honduras exposed the weakness and
limitations of the Obama presidency as a putative "progressive" force for "Hope"
and "Change" in US foreign policy. Only the U.S. administration acting in support
of the Honduran national resistance has the financial, political and military
leverage to pressure the Honduran de facto government into retreating and allowing
a return to democracy. Yet the Obama administration has not possessed the will or
cohesion to create real consequences on the military coup leaders and their
political puppets. In light of the uninterrupted anti-democratic role of the
United States in the history of Central America perhaps rational people shouldn't
be surprised.1.

However, the 'let-down' over the US role in the post-coup events has become very
apparent in the more progressive section of the American electorate which offered
the Obama candidacy its critical support.2 Perhaps it was one body-blow too many
after Obama's Hi-Finance bailouts, the extension of the War in Afghanistan, and
record unemployment.

A number of pro-Obama US progressives insisted that if Obama didn't impose full

sanctions on the coup government and suspend all relations, as most other
countries (but not Canada's) had done, the traditional US policy would remain in
the hemisphere, the US conniving with coups that created results pleasing to the
US ruling class.

Contradictory cues and gestures proceeded from the different organs of policy
information in Washington: the president denounced the action as illegal and so on
- yet could not seem to decide whether call the 'act' an illegal coup. Meanwhile
in the State Department Hillary Clinton chided the elected president Zelaya
together with the coup plotters as equally guilty players. She was twice asked by
the press whether restoring democracy in Honduras meant returning the elected
president, and twice she refused to answer. 3 Republican and ‘Blue Dog Democrat’
legislators who were not required by their Office to show restraint were in
celebration. It began to seem to some progressives that the bad smell exuded by
the Bush-Cheney government was seeping back into the Washington air.

For all the eloquence and elegance of the first African-American president of the
USA, a leftist elected leader aligned with Venezuela had been disposed of in a
manner continuous with US predatory complicity in Latin America coups under all
other American presidents. Had not the Honduran Military brass that did the deed
been trained in skullduggery and torture at the School of the Americas in Fort
Benning, Georgia? 4 In the weeks following June 28th it actually seemed as if the
Obama balloon had been popped and all the rhetorical “Hope" and "Change" was being
scrutinized.

And it also seemed just about then in mid-summer that the new Democrat president
appeared to some friends as inestimable, dithering – possibly weak. As Obama gave
ambiguous sound bytes in Washington without unambiguously acting against the coup
government, he lost credibility not just in Latin America, not only in Europe, but
also among many US activists. The U.S role had become transparently ludicrous, and
a well-coordinated White House spin was in a shambles. Eventually the US
Ambassador on the scene agreed it was a military coup - though the State
Department refused to call it that. It appeared there was a US federal law
requiring the cut off of all aid if a coup was formally recognized, and that was
obviously just what Barack and Hillary were not about to do. As for President
Manuel Zelaya, who was kidnapped in the middle of the night by the US trained
chief general of Honduras, he was turning out to actually possess the support of
the Honduran workers, the peasants, the poor, --" in other words the vast
majority," according to the Cross-Border Network. 5

Is President Obama willing or able to confront the "permanent government" of

America, that is the corporate domination of the republic? Is Obama tough as well
as cool? Does he want to reduce American dominance in the world?

Meanwhile as summer played out and September arrived, Obama remained silent about
the repression used by the coup against protestors. Demonstrators have been shot
and killed, radio and TV stations shut down, and journalists jailed. This past
week a trade union leader and a political activist were murdered. One thing is
clear: the coup leaders will be emboldened in their repressive measures if Obama
continues his silence about a coup government almost wholly dependent on the US
for aid, commerce, political legitimacy, and survival.
______________________________________________________________________

1. The literature on US imperialism in Latin America is extensive. See surveys as

in, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Latin America and the Caribbean. 2nd ed. New
York, Cambridge University Press, and: Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries
of the Pillage of a Continent, by Eduardo Galeano.

2. For example see: Tom Hayden, “Obama vs. Clinton on Honduras?” , July 14, 2009
“Obama cannot long support both the OAS efforts at isolating the coup plotters and
also tolerate Clinton-identified political consultants lobbying on behalf of the
military-installed regime.”

3. "U.S. continues to train Honduran soldiers Coup that ousted president", didn't
stop U.S. engagement in Honduras, By James Hodge and Linda Cooper, National
Catholic Reporter July. 14, 09

4. "Secrets of the Honduran Armed Forces

And More Secrets About the US Soldiers Stationed There",
By Belén Fernández, The Narco News Bulletin, September 7, 2009

5. U.S. Chided for Aiding Honduras Despite Coup, One World Net,
September 8, 2009