In Honduras, a Mess Made in the U.S.
In Honduras, a Mess Made in the U.S.
By DANA FRANK
Published: January 26, 2012
SANTA CRUZ, Calif.
IT’S time to acknowledge the foreign policy disaster that American support for the Porfirio Lobo administration in Honduras has become. Ever since the June 28, 2009, coup that deposed Honduras’s democratically elected president, José Manuel Zelaya, the country has been descending deeper into a human rights and security abyss. That abyss is in good part the State Department’s making.
The headlines have been full of horror stories about Honduras. According to the United Nations, it now has the world’s highest murder rate, and San Pedro Sula, its second city, is more dangerous than Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, a center for drug cartel violence.
Much of the press in the United States has attributed this violence solely to drug trafficking and gangs. But the coup was what threw open the doors to a huge increase in drug trafficking and violence, and it unleashed a continuing wave of state-sponsored repression.
The current government of President Lobo won power in a November 2009 election managed by the same figures who had initiated the coup. Most opposition candidates withdrew in protest, and all major international observers boycotted the election, except for the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, which are financed by the United States.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/opinion/in-honduras-a-mess-helped-by-the-us.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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I am talking about the process by which the fascists and traitors on the far right blackmail, bully, sabotage and blame the corporate/war profiteer operatives of the 'liberal' 'center,' which willingly LET THEMSELVES be blackmailed, bullied, sabotaged and blamed, because their ultimate goals are the same. The one openly hijacks the U.S. military and murders a hundred thousand people to achieve their goals (say, stealing Iraq's oil); the other sets things up for them, or covers up for them after these crimes are committed.
My analysis is not a "free pass" for Obama. It is a realistic assessment of who designed the Honduran coup and how and why the Obama team (with two Bushwhack wars and U.S. bankruptcy on their hands, only six month into their term) reacted as they did.
THEIR plan for Latin America is perhaps more apparent in the case of Colombia. They removed the Bushwack mafia boss, Alvaro Uribe, and support the new rightwing president who sometimes sounds like Hugo Chavez (f.i., promising universal free medical to all Colombians by this year) and who immediately made peace with Venezuela. The Bushwhacks see to the decapitation of the labor unions and the murder and mayhem against the political left for eight years, and the Obamites then work on a better image for Colombia and arrange "free trade for the rich," sans a healthy labor movement and a strong, grass roots, leftist organizing force in Colombia. If this doesn't work to undermine and "divide and conquer" the big leftist movement in the region (of which Venezuela was the pioneer) and to reboot U.S./transglobal financial control of the region, then corporate news narratives and U.S. military bases have been all set up to take back the region in another way (Oil War II?), when/if Jeb is Diebolded into the White House.
The problem for U.S. policymakers, whether Democratic or Republican, is how best to serve transglobal corporate interests and war profiteers--for instance, whether to "shock and awe" the "cradle of civilization" with U.S. "smart bombs" (Iraq) or pretend not to have had anything to do with the tribes now battling over control of Libya's oil and their revolt against Gaddaffi's tribe (one of the phonier "Arab Spring" narratives I've seen) while drone-bombing the loyal Libyan military (with "collateral damage"
and shifting the onus to NATO. The TRUE democratic leader of the revolt in Libya was assassinated early on. Now it's just mayhem and "our bastard" will eventually emerge from the chaos.
This is a subtler transglobal/war profiteer policy (which I credit mostly to Leon Panetta, a Bush Sr crony)--similar to the "clean up" operation in Colombia (also Panetta), coordinated with Clinton, of course--and illuminates the Honduran coup.
I don't think Panetta/Clinton would have designed and implemented this coup. It was too crude. It OBVIOUSLY alienated leaders like the former and current presidents of Brazil, with whom the Obama/Clinton team would like to have had good relations (not to support the social justice/independence movement in Latin America but to "divide and conquer" it by touting the more corporate-friendly Brazil as the model). The Honduran coup--which I believe was implemented by Bushwhack elements in the State Department (which Jim DeMint was trying to prevent from being replaced, by holding up all Obama appointments in LatAm in an open blackmailing of Obama to force him to support the coup and U.S. belligerence in the region) and the Pentagon (in collusion with the U.S. funded/trained Honduran military)--was NOT how Obama would have proceeded in Honduras. The goal would have been the same--to defeat the left and prevent social justice and independence in Honduras--but the methods would have been markedly different (as they are in Colombia).
It's quite interesting how Clinton immediately tried to place a phony 'democratic' veil over the Honduran coup (trying to fool savvy leaders like Lula da Silva). The Bushwhacks wouldn't have bothered. They would have gone with a Pinochet-like, bloody, fascist military dictatorship (for instance, IDing the leftist political forces and exterminating them directly with pogroms)--for quick profits of all kinds (including further consolidation of the huge cocaine revenue stream) and in furtherance of the war plan against Venezuela--rather than the sneaky "death squad" war of attrition against the left that is unfolding in Honduras under a U.S.-installed, phony 'democratic' regime.
Same goals. Different methods. And part of this "dans macabre" of the Democratic/Republican leadership is the phony political narrative here--by which the left is lopped off of the political spectrum and the fascist/corporate right accuses the 'liberal'/corporate 'center' of being "soft" on this and "soft" on that, and the 'liberal'/corporate 'center' acts all scared that they are not being fascist enough. This "narrative" (and other points of collusion) is likely laying the ground work for the comeback of the Bush Junta (Bush Junta II--Jeb) for more wars and looting. Another outcome is that the entire cost of the Bushwacks' wars and mindboggling looting falls on the backs of the U.S. poor and is blamed on the broken progressive movement in the U.S., in order to dismantle the remaining elements of the "New Deal."
In summary, my analysis is by no means a "free pass" for Obama, et al. It is an attempt to explain how this particular event worked. I think Obama/Clinton wanted to proceed in a subtler fashion and were sabotaged, early on, by this coup--but then didn't mind capitalizing on the event, as it unfolded, to install a U.S. transglobal/war profiteer government in Honduras. (important note: Panetta was not in place yet at the CIA when this coup was triggered. He is the architect of what I would call the anti-Rumsfeld, anti-Cheney plan for U.S. world domination.)
