Written by Laura Carlsen
Source: Americas MexicoBlog
The good news is that Washington has finally begun to take stronger actions on Honduras .
The bad news is that the actions completely contradict each other, resulting in ambiguity, paralysis and infighting as the Honduran crisis explodes.
For many months, the news out of the U.S. capital focused on contradictions between multilateral resolutions to condemn the coup, the scarce but firm remarks from President Obama and fudging from the State Department. At the same time, the Pentagon kept true to its image of the strong-but-silent-type, not responding to confirm or deny accusations that its base at Palmerola played a role in the abduction of President Zelaya, that it invited the Armed Forces of the coup regime to participate in PANAMAX exercises last month, or that its military presence in Honduras was tacitly supporting the coup.
All these contradictions still exist. But now members of the U.S. Congress and private sector have made coherent policy even more unlikely by openly working to oppose the U.S. official position.
Congress Faces Off
A small minority group in the U.S. House and Senate is determined to support the Honduran coup regime despite official government policy to oppose it. In a showdown that reveals the depths of the division in Congress, conservative Senator Jim DeMint announced a plan to travel to Honduras with three fellow Republicans ( U.S. Representatives Aaron Schock R-Illinois, Peter Roskam R-Illinois and Doug Lamborn R-Colorado). DeMint has been outspoken in saying that the military coup in Honduras is legal and constitutional, outright rejecting the UN and Organization of American States resolutions that the Obama administration voted to approve.
Head of the Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. John Kerry, refused to approve Committee financing for the trip. DeMint credits Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell for getting around Kerry’s refusal to fund his coup-tour by obtaining a plane from the Defense Department. He does not define this as a “fact-finding trip” as much of the press has falsely re-dubbed it. Instead, he explicitly announces the political bias of his publicly funded Honduran jaunt, writing on Twitter, “Leading delegation to Honduras tomorrow to support Nov. 29 elections. Hondurans should be able to choose their own future.”
The U.S. government, along with other governments in the hemisphere, has announced that it will not recognize the Nov. 29 Honduran elections if they are held under the military coup.
DeMint lashed out at Kerry’s move, calling it “bullying.” Kerry shot back that DeMint was blocking development of government Latin America policy.
But Kerry’s office wasn’t referring to DeMint’s anti-democratic stance on Honduras . He was referring to the DeMint-led veto on key Obama diplomatic appointments to Latin America . Under Senate law, if a single senator objects to a nomination, the Senate must muster 60 votes to overcome the objection. The Democrats currently have only 59, counting independents. This means that DeMint can apparaently indefinitely block Obama’s appointments to major posts in Latin American diplomacy. The region is the only one that still does not have a new under-secretary of state to coordinate policy, since the nominee, Arturo Valenzuela, has not been approved.
The second Congressional practitioner of renegade diplomacy is Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. The Florida Congresswoman is planning to visit Honduras in the coming weeks. It’s pretty clear why Ros-Lehtinen goes out on a limb to defend the Honduran coup. Of Cuban descent, she’s virulently anti-Castro and jumps on any opportunity to attack center-left governments in Latin America , particularly ones with ties to Venezuela .
Ros-Lehtinen describes her presumably public-funded trip with a bias that’s inexplicit about its opposition to the official policy of the country she ostensibly represents: “I am traveling to Honduras to conduct my own assessment of the situation on the ground and the state of U.S. interests in light of the U.S. ‘s misguided Zelaya-focused approach,” she stated.
The Congresswoman plans to meet with Micheletti, business leaders, the US Embassy and other members of the coup. She had a meeting scheduled with Honduran businessman Alfredo Facusse in Miami last week but Facusse, a supporter of the coup, had his visa revoked under the U.S. State Department measure to sanction the coup.
This would be but a last gasp of the fading ultra-conservative Florida Cuban group were it not for the fact that Ros-Lehtinen has power in Congress. Due to her seniority—she has been a member since 1989—she is currently a ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
UDW