Honduras: State Dept. Busted on Support of Coup in Honduras
Dear Relatives,
Another tip of the “Ice Berg” in regard to USA Policies toward Latin America!( More To come!)
Do our relatives in the US Government who are thinking like this really believe that these kinds of “secret actions” are not being clearly seen and being prepareded for on a Hemispheric and Global level by those that have sufferred these kinds of injustices for so many years???????? Arrogance will ultmately defeat anyone, no matter who they are,unless they completely surrender to the the power, love and grace of the Creator!
Warm Love and Greetings,
Brother Phil
November 29, 2010 by CommonDreams.org a href=”http://www.commondreams.org/”>http://www.commondreams.org/>
Wikileaks
Honduras: State Dept. Busted on Support of Coup
by Robert Naiman
By July 24, 2009, the U.S. government was totally clear about the
basic facts of what took place in Honduras on June 28, 2009. The U.S.
embassy in Tegucigalpa sent a
cablea href=”http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/28/world/20101128-cab”>http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/28/world/20101128-cab
les-viewer.html?hp#report/cables-09TEGUCIGALPA645>to
Washington with subject: “Open and Shut: The Case of the Honduran
Coup,”
asserting that “there is no doubt” that the events of June 28
“constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup.” The Embassy listed
arguments being made by supporters of the coup to claim its legality,
and dismissed them
thus: “none … has any substantive validity under the Honduran
constitution.” The Honduran military clearly had no legal authority to
remove President Zelaya from office or from Honduras, the Embassy
said, and their action – the Embassy described it as an “abduction”
and “kidnapping” – was clearly unconstitutional.
It is inconceivable that any top U.S. official responsible for U.S.
policy in Honduras was not familiar with the contents of the July 24
cable, which summarized the assessment of the U.S. Embassy in Honduras
on key facts that were politically disputed by supporters of the coup
regime. The cable was addressed to Tom Shannon, then Assistant
Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs; Harold Koh, the
State Department’s Legal Adviser; and Dan Restrepo, Senior Director
for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the National Security Council. The
cable was sent to the White House and to Secretary of State Clinton.
But despite the fact that the U.S. government was crystal clear on
what had transpired, the U.S. did not immediately cut off all aid to
Honduras except “democracy assistance,” as required by U.S. law.
Instead, a month after this cable was sent, the State Department, in
its public pronouncements,
pretendeda href=”http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2009/aug/128373.htm”>http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2009/aug/128373.htm>that
the events of June 28 – in particular, “who did what to whom” and the
constitutionality of these actions – were murky and needed further
study by State Department lawyers, despite the fact that the State
Department’s top lawyer, Harold Koh, knew exactly “who did what to
whom” and that these actions were unconstitutional at least one month
earlier. The State Department, to justify its delay in carrying out
U.S. law, invented a legal distinction between a “coup” and a
“military coup,” claiming that the State Department’s lawyers had to
determine whether a “military coup” took place, because only that
determination would meet the legal threshold for the aid cutoff.
QUESTION: And so – sorry, just a follow-up. If this is a coup – the
State Department considers this a coup, what’s the next step? And I
mean, there is a legal framework on the U.S. laws dealing with
countries that are under coup d’état? I mean, what’s holding you guys
[back from taking] other measures according [to] the law?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: I think what you’re referring
to, Mr.
Davila, is whether or not this is – has been determined to be a
military coup. And you’re correct that there are provisions in our law
that have to be applied if it is determined that this is a military
coup. And frankly, our lawyers are looking at that exact question. And
when we get the answer to that, you are right, there will be things
that – if it is determined that this was a military coup, there will
be things that will kick in.
As you know, on the ground, there’s a lot of discussion about who did
what to whom and what things were constitutional or not, which is why
our lawyers are really looking at the event as we understand them in
order to come out with the accurate determination.
But the July 24 cable shows that this was nonsense. The phrase
“military coup” occurs nowhere in the document, a remarkable omission
in a cable from the Embassy presenting the Embassy’s analysis of the
June 28 events, their constitutionality and legality one month after
the fact, if that were a crucial distinction in assessing U.S. policy.
And indeed, initial press reports on the statements of top U.S.
officials in response to the coup made no such distinction
a href=”http://www.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE55S5J220090629″>http://www.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE55S5J220090629>,
using the descriptions “coup” and “military coup” interchangeably.
Why did the State Department drag its feet, pretending that facts
which it knew to be clear-cut were murky? Why didn’t the State
Department speak publicly after July 24 with the same moral clarity as
the July 24 cable from the Embassy in Honduras? Had the State
Department shared publicly the Embassy’s clear assessment of the June
28 events after July 24, history might have turned out differently,
because supporters of the coup in the United States – including
Republican Members of Congress and media talking heads – continued to
dispute basic facts about the coup which the US Embassy in Honduras
had reported were not subject to reasonable dispute, and U.S.
media reporting on the coup continued to describe these facts as
subject to reasonable dispute, long after the Embassy had firmly
declared that they were not.
As the Center for Economic and Policy Research noted in an August 2009
reporta href=”http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/mcc-sanctions-2009-0″>http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/mcc-sanctions-2009-0
8.pdf>, in the previous 12 months the U.S. had responded to other
coups by cutting U.S. aid within days. In these cases – in Africa –
there was no lengthy deliberation on whether a “coup” was a “military
coup.”
What was the difference?
A key difference was that Honduras is in Central America, “our backyard,”
so
different rules applied. Top officials in Washington supported the
political aims of the coup. They did not nominally support the means
of the coup, as far as we know, but they supported its political end:
the removal of the ability of President Zelaya and his supporters to
pursue a meaningful reform project in Honduras. On the other hand,
they were politically constrained not to support the coup openly,
since they knew it to be illegal and unconstitutional. Thus, they
pursued a “diplomatic compromise” which would “restore constitutional
order” while achieving the coup’s central political
aim: removal of the ability of President Zelaya and his supporters to
pursue a meaningful reform project in Honduras. The effect of their
efforts at “diplomatic compromise” was to allow the coup to stand, a
result that these supporters of the coup’s political aims were
evidently content with.
Why does this matter now?
First, the constitutional and political crisis in Honduras is ongoing,
and the failure of the U.S. to take immediate, decisive action in
response to the coup was a significant cause of the ongoing crisis.
After nominally opposing the coup, and slowly and fitfully
implementing partial sanctions against the coup regime in a way that
did not convince the coup regime that the U.S. was serious, the U.S.
moved to support elections under the coup regime which were not
recognized by the rest of the hemisphere, and today the U.S. is
lobbying for the government created by that disputed election to be
readmitted to the Organization of American States, in opposition to
most of the rest of the hemisphere, despite ongoing, major violations
of human rights in Honduras, about which the U.S. is doing essentially
nothing.
Second, the relationship of actual U.S. policy – as opposed to
rhetorical pronouncements – to democracy in the region is very much a
live issue from Haiti to Bolivia.
Yesterday there was an election in Haiti. This election was funded by
the U.S., despite the fact that major parties were excluded from
participation by the government’s electoral council, a fact that
Republican and Democratic Members of Congress, in addition to NGOs,
complained about without
resulta href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/un-troops-in-haiti—time_b_785981.html”>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/un-troops-in-haiti—ti…>.
The Washington Post
reportsa href=”http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/2″>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/2
8/AR2010112801065.html>that the election ended with “nearly all the
major candidates calling for the results to be tossed out amid
‘massive fraud.'”: “12 of the 19 candidates on Sunday’s ballot
appeared together at a raucous afternoon news conference to accuse the
government of President Rene Preval of trying to steal the election
and install his chosen candidate, Jude Celestin.”
Yesterday’s election in Haiti had the fingerprints of the U.S.
government all over it. It was funded by the U.S. “Security” for the
election was purportedly provided by UN troops, paid for by the U.S.
And the crucial historical context of the election was the 2004 coup
that deposed democratically elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide,
a coup engineered by the U.S. with years of economic destruction
clearly intended to topple the elected government.
Last week, Bolivian President Evo Morales called
outa href=”http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2010/11/22/”>http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2010/11/22/
bolivian_leader_lectures_gates_about_us_behavior/>the
U.S. for its recent history of supporting coups in the region.
AP’s treatment of President Morales’ remarks was instructive:
Morales also alleged U.S. involvement in coup attempts or political
upheaval in Venezuela in 2002, Honduras in 2009 and Ecuador in 2010.
“The empire of the United States won,” in Honduras, Morales said, a
reference to the allegations of former Honduran President Manuel
Zelaya that the U.S. was behind his ouster.
“The people of the Americas in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, we won,”
Morales continued. “We are three to one with the United States. Let’s
see what the future brings.”
U.S. officials have repeatedly denied involvement in all of those
cases and *critics of the United States have produced no clear
evidence*. [my emphasis]
It’s certainly true that critics have produced “no clear evidence” of U.S.
“involvement” in any of these cases – if your standard for “clear
evidence” of U.S. “involvement” is a US government document that
dictated in advance everything that subsequently happened. But this
would be like saying that critics have produced “no clear evidence”
for the Armenian Genocide because researchers haven’t yet found a
Turkish Mein Kampf. [Some who dispute that there was an “Armenian
Genocide” do actually claim something like this – “there is no proof
of a plan” – but claims like this are generally not taken seriously by
U.S. media – except when the U.S.
government is an author of the crime, and the crime is recent.]
In the case of the coup in Venezuela in 2002, we know the following:
– groups in Venezuela that participated in the coup had been supported
financially and politically by the U.S.
– the CIA had advance knowledge of the plans for a coup, and did
nothing to warn the Venezuelan government; nor did the US do anything
meaningful to try to stop the coup.
– although the US knew in advance about the plans for a coup, when
these events played out, the US tried to claim that there was no coup.
– the US pushed for international recognition of the coup government.
– the International Monetary Fund, which would not take such action
without advance approval from the United States, announced its
willingness to support the coup government a few hours after the coup
took place.
These facts about U.S. government “involvement” in the coup in
Venezuela are documented in Oliver Stone’s recent movie, *South of the
Border*. This is why it’s so important for as many Americans as
possible to see this movie:
because there are basic facts about the relationship of actual U.S.
government policies – as opposed to rhetoric – to democracy in Latin
America that major U.S. media simply cannot be counted upon to report
straight. In order to successfully agitate for meaningful reform of
U.S. government policy in Latin America, Americans have to know what
the actual policy of the U.S. government has been, something they are
unlikely to learn from major U.S. media.
And this is why Just Foreign Policy is urging Americans to organize
house parties on December 10 – Human Rights Day – to watch *South of
the Border*.
You can sign up to host a screening
herea href=”http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/southofobama”>http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/southofobama>
.
Here is a clip from South of the Border, in which Scott Wilson,
formerly Foreign Editor of the Washington Post, describes the
“involvement” of the U.S. in the coup in Venezuela:
And here is a clip from South of the Border in which President
Morales talks with Oliver Stone about the role of the media:
South of the Border Clip #2 a href=”http://vimeo.com/15461157″>http://vimeo.com/15461157> from Cinema
Libre Studio a href=”http://vimeo.com/user2565426″>http://vimeo.com/user2565426> on Vimeo
a href=”http://vimeo.com/”>http://vimeo.com/>.
Oliver Stone: “Now [Morales] joining the Hugo ranks, becoming more the
‘bad left’ in the American media.”
President Morales: “The media will always try to criminalize the fight
against neoliberalism, colonialism, and imperialism. It’s almost normal.
The
worst enemy I have is the media.”
Robert Naiman is Policy Director at Just Foreign
Policya href=”http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/”>http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/>