In the complex world of hemispheric politics, where the name of Revolutionary War veteran James Monroe is still tossed about in glorious ancient relevancy, currency is everything and subtle shifts in the stance of the North American superpower start as ripples below the mouth of the Potomac, only to end as tidal waves on the shores of nations to our south.
The late upset in Honduras has created what appears to be a neat left-right furrow in our own commentariat. Fresh from backing the Khomeini - er, democratic - faction in the dispute over the clearly fraudulent Iranian election, our right-wing voices (God bless 'em) are now arguing that the military takeover in the small Central American nation is anything but the coup d'etat that it so clearly is.
As Larisa Alexandrovna writes for Raw Story, the right-wing nuts are trying to use Obama's relatively cautious support for returning the elected president of Honduras to office as a bludgeon, claiming "radical leftist" leanings.
What is remarkably strange in these talking points is the absence of world condemnation of this coup. Over and over, in countless examples, Obama is being painted as a Castro and Chavez ally, a left-wing radical who supports tyranny. The talking points are so similar and so numerous that the only logical explanation is that this is a coordinated political effort.
Most importantly, these type of extreme word-games have real world implications. Consider that the turn of events in Honduras and the political attack on Obama using that crisis have some on the extreme-right hoping that our own military will remove President Obama from office to protect “democracy.”
More dangerous signal flares: based on his support for the elected government in Honduras, Barack Obama deserves his own, uh, intervention, in the exercise of his presidential powers, argues right-wing blogger MacRanger:
Americans - true Americans - need to keep a special eye on President Obama, or else risk a time when his unconstitutional grabs for power get past the point of no return. Our constitution also provides the solution for that, and I hope our elected leaders - on both sides of the isle - remember that.
Much of this is about using Venezuelan boss Hugo Chavez as a stalking horse to tar Obama as a socialist fellow traveler. In typical follow-the-leader fashion, Pam at Atlas Shrugged said the Honduran military moved to "save itself from a Chavez backed dictatorship." That jibes with the strange, erratic behavior of South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, who says President Barack Obama's call to reinstate Zelaya is "a slap in the face to the people of the Honduras."
Before he departed (once again) to visit his personal Neverland of Trig Palin obstetrics conspiracy obsession, Andrew Sullivan tweeted: "Honduras Is Not Iran" and linked to a reader's email claiming the thuggish armed takeover that sent elected Honduran President Zelaya scurrying to the United States in his pajamas was both legal and necessary. He's right about one thing: it's not Iran - in that American intervention, foreign policy, and citizen involvement can indeed change the outcome and restore the rule of law to the poor country of 7.5 million. There's a worthwhile petition over on Facebook worth signing and sending to your friends demanding the restoration of the elected president of Honduras - which is no less than President Obama, Secretary Clinton, the United Nations Security Council, and the Organization of American States have done.
President Zelaya has vowed to return to his country this weekend to confront the rump government that took control at the point of a bayonet. The situation is, as they say, fluid. I'll be following the story via Al Giordano and his team at Narco News, which has the best sources of any English-language publication covering Central America.
