Obama still doesn’t get it

from : venezuelananalysis (venezuela)

June 30th 2009, by Steven Bates

For all its talk about supporting democracy the Obama administration does not seem to understand what it means. Manuel Zalaya was democratically elected to the presidency in Honduras. The U.S. government should not have discussed ways to have the democratically-elected president of Honduras arrested and removed from office, and yet that is what they have admitted to doing.
In the 6-29-2009 New York Times article, U.S. State Department and Obama administration officials were quoted as saying they were in discussions with some in Hondurans who might “…remove the president from office, how he could be arrested, on whose authority they could do that.” Their intent was reportedly to focus on “legal maneuvers to remove the president….” It seems the Obama administration does not understand that it is not the role of the U.S. government to discuss how to use maneuvers, legal or otherwise, to arrest or remove the democratically-elected president of a sovereign nation. If the U.S. government wants to negotiate better relations with the democratically-elected president of another nation that is one thing, but to discuss ways to remove that president from office is quite another, and is not appropriate. Until the Obama administration learns the difference they should stay out of the affairs of other nations.
It is just such “legal maneuvers” that have been a major problem with U.S. government decision-making on many fronts, twisting democracy and constitutional requirements, contorting them to meet the needs of U.S. interests. Such ‘legal maneuvering’ is all too reminiscent of the U.S. State department legal wrangling and maneuvering to justify and rationalize ‘legal’ torture. The U.S. State department has apparently not yet found its bearings after having lost them during the previous administration.
It is not just the illegal coup in Honduras that Obama needs to condemn; it is also his own state department involvement and encouragement of legal wrangling in the overall process.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/world/americas/30honduras.html?_r=1&re...

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