There Was No Military Coup In Honduras

I find the hypocrisy of the Obama Administration has reached new heights, particularly in regards to the arrest and exile of Honduran President Zelaya by the Honduran Army.

The media has called it a military coup. But it was the Honduran government following Honduran law and the Honduran Constitution, keeping democracy alive in a nation that had come under the power of a nascent Hugo Chavez.

Zelaya was not deposed on a whim of the Honduran Supreme Court. He was warned that his efforts to subvert the constitution in order to become a long-term president (maybe President-For-Life) would not be tolerated. More than once he tried to dismantle the government institutions that ensured the laws of Honduras would be followed. More than once he tried to replace army officers with those that would be loyal to him and not Honduras. When he tried to hold an illegal referendum (with the help of Hugo Chavez, dictator of Venezuela and a close ally of Zelaya), the court acted, ordering his arrest.

That Mr. Zelaya acted as if he were above the law, there is no doubt. While Honduran law allows for a constitutional rewrite, the power to open that door does not lie with the president. (Emphasis mine - ed). A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress.

But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on his own and had Mr. Chávez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela. The Supreme Court ruled his referendum unconstitutional, and it instructed the military not to carry out the logistics of the vote as it normally would do.

So a president fancies himself above the law, tries an end run around the constitution, and is arrested for breaking the law. How is this a coup? It certainly is allowed under the Honduran Constitution. Nowhere does it say in their constitution that they must sit quietly while their president tries to make himself President-For-Life and turns their country into a clone of Venezuela or Cuba.

Neither Obama nor Secretary of State Clinton should be condemning the moves by the Honduran government to ensure democracy stays alive in their country. But then again, Obama is on overt socialist and sympathetic to Marxist ideology (by his own admission).