Or, to put in another way: When did a military coup ever take place that was ordered by that country's supreme court, that was supported by the political party of the president who was overthrown, in which not one person was injured, let alone killed, and which replaced the ousted the president with the president of the country's congress, a member of the same party as the ousted president?
But none of this matters to the United Nations, which never met a left-wing tyrant it didn't find appealing. That is why the president of the U.N. General Assembly, a former Sandinista foreign minister, Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, accompanied Zelaya in the airplane on Zelaya's first attempt to return to Honduras on July 5. (Brockmann, among his other radical moral positions, is so virulently anti-Israel that the Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations threatened not to attend the U.N. Holocaust Memorial Day event if Brockmann showed up.)
And none of this matters to the OAS, which just lifted its ban on Cuba's membership and which says nothing about Chavez's shutting down of Venezuela's opposition radio and television stations.
And none of this matters to the world's left-wing media. Thus, on July 1, a writer for the United Kingdom newspaper The Guardian penned this insight: "There is no excuse for this coup. … The battle between Zelaya and his opponents pits a reform president who is supported by labor unions and social organizations against a Mafia-like, drug-ridden, corrupt political elite." To the Guardian writer, Zelaya was a "reform president." Lenin's useful idiots never die out.
And the Los Angeles Times editorial page wrote: "Even though the Honduran Congress and military may believe they are defending the country against a would-be dictator, the ends don't justify the means."
Quite a great deal of foolishness in one sentence. That the Los Angeles Times does not believe that Zelaya is a would-be dictator is mind-numbing. As for the cliche that "the ends don't justify the means," in fact they quite often do. That is one of the ways in which we measure means. One assumes that while the Los Angeles Times believes that Americans should be law-abiding, it agrees with Rosa Parks having broken the law. The ends (fighting segregation) justified the means (breaking the law).
If Honduras is hung out to dry, if America suspends trade and economic aid, the forces arrayed against liberty in Latin America will have won a major victory. On the other hand, if Honduras is not abandoned now, those Iran-supporting, America-hating, liberty-loathing forces will have suffered a major defeat.
Even members of the Obama administration recognize this. As quoted in the Washington Post, Jeffrey Davidow, a retired U.S. ambassador who served as President Obama's special adviser for the recent Summit of the Americas, said:
"The threats against democracy in Latin America … are not those coming from military coups, but rather from governments which are ignoring checks and balances, overriding other elements of government."
Let your representatives in Congress know that America needs to stand with liberty, not with Castro, Ortega, Zelaya, Chavez, the OAS, and the U.N. And buy Honduran goods. I am smoking a terrific Honduran cigar as I write these words: God bless Honduras.
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