Obama’s Honduran Mistake

During the campaign Obama talked about foreign policy as if the whole world would suddenly be at peace upon his arrival in the White House. Flowers would bloom, rouge nations would talk to us, and war would be abolished forever.

Ha! Yeah right.

Obama’s foreign policy utopia has morphed into a world wide foreign relations nightmare. North Korea is threatening war (if you’d like to call it that), Iran is on the brink of a revolution, and now Honduras is on edge after the Honduran military ousted their socialist and democracy crushing leader.

By now most of you have heard the situation, but allow me to fill in some of the gaps. The president of Honduras is Mel Zelaya, he’s an extreme leftist, and his term as president is ending very soon. The Honduran constitution, much like ours, has term limits for their president, so in a few months Zelaya would be term limited out.

And ya know what? That just doesn’t jibe well with a wannabe dictator. So Zelaya decided to do something about it, he requested a referendum be put on the ballot this past Sunday that would extend the term limits for president, allowing him to run once again for reelection.

There’s nothing wrong with the people voting on a referendum for the constitution, assuming it has gone through the proper government agencies and has been approved in accordance to the nation’s constitution. Surprise, Zelaya didn’t follow that rule.

According to the constitution of Honduras the Congress must approve any constutitional referendum that is placed on the ballot, and in this instance they didn’t approve Zelaya’s proposal. He didn’t care, he had the proper ballots shipped to him and planned to go through with the vote whether Congress wanted him to or not. The Honduran Supreme Court even ruled the vote unconstitutional and instructed the military to withhold the ballots and not administer the vote.

Zelaya still didn’t back down. He lead a march down to the military base where the ballots were being held, broke in, and stole them. The military retrieved the ballots, and took Zelaya with them, arresting him and shipping him off to Costa Rica.

Zelaya had to have known this was coming, after all the attorney general said the vote was illegal and he would prosecute anyone who attempted to carry it out, and apparently that included the president of the country.

To me this is pretty clear cut, the entire government of Honduras was against this referendum, hell every branch, outside of Zelaya’s, deemed the move unconstutional. They went through the proper means of enforcement, but Zelaya didn’t listen. Arresting him was the last resort, not the first.

However, Obama has stunningly taken Zelaya’s side in this whole ordeal. He claims that Zelaya’s arrest was “not legal” and that he remains the president of Honduras.

According to an Associated Press article…

Obama pledged the U.S. to “stand on the side of democracy” and to work with other nations and international entities to resolve the matter peacefully.

Try not to strain yourself as you attempt to understand Obama’s logic. He’s standing “on the side of democracy” by supporting a guy who was trying to knock democracy to the floor and then jump on top of it. Zelaya ignored his democratic government every step of the way while attempting to get the referendum on the ballot.

I honestly cannot think of one legitimate reason to support Zelaya in this situation. Has Obama not read the Declaration of Independence which reads, “Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…” If it’s good enough for the Founding Fathers, it’s good enough for Honduras.

Every branch of government in Honduras deemed this referendum illegal, and Zelaya was defiant every step of the way. They had no choice but to arrest him to prevent a dictatorial rise of power. What the Honduran military and Congress did was not illegal, it was brave and necessary.

Whether it be Iran or Honduras, so far in his presidency Obama has not side with democracy every step of the way, he’s ignored it.

–jb