Honduras – it didn’t start as a coup , but …

I won’t argue that we have a “coup-like situation.”

The “it wasn’t a coup” been my stance from the start, and I’m sticking to it. Certainly not I’ve said from my first post on the subject that Honduran President Manuel Zelaya brought this on himself.

My “not a coup” impression was fortified by an American expat in Honduras, working at an NGO, who started there with the Peace Corps. That’s the type of person who’s normally not that close to conservative, but at the same time, isn’t blind to what’s happening, and what’s behind what’s happening.

At the same time, I’ve also said from the start that it’s never good when the military gets involved in Central American politics. Especially when, as I know without outside reminder, that members of the Honduran military have been trained at the formerly named School of the Americas.

So, as this thing wends along, I’m not alone in seeing this as a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” moment, or alternatively, a “pox on both their houses” issue.

Here’s Michael Tomasky, comparing Zelaya to Michael Bloomberg. He does use the word “coup,” but notes that no instability is likely.

And, the usually insightful Steve Clemons opines:

In the immediate aftermath of this coup it's difficult to say exactly which side is democratic. President Zelaya's would be referendum was explicitly against the Honduran constitution, yet he insisted on moving ahead with the vote against the wishes of the nation's Supreme Court, Congress, and military. Perhaps his power grab was buoyed by the success of his friend Hugo Chavez' February referendum to end presidential term limits in Venezuela. Zelaya was certainly acting undemocratic, but there's a right way and a wrong way to contain an overreaching leader; forcing him out of the country at gunpoint is certainly the wrong way. This is a tough call to make; one illegal act countered by another.

The commenter “American,” in the the comment thread on my post cited above, makes good points as to how the military has turned this into, shall we say, a “coup-like situation.” However, he goes beyond this into a flat-out defense of Zelaya.

In doing so, he strikes me as like someone like Andrew Sullivan on Iran — blindly wanting to see blacks and white, where all that exists, not counting the Honduran military, is largely muddled shades of gray, none of them too light.

Zelaya knew into whose bed he had jumped when he snuggled up with Señor Bolivarean, and he knew exactly what tactics he was borrowing. Perhaps among his failures, though, is that, unlike his mentor Chavez, he was never in the military himself.

Also, for people like “American” trying to claim it was just an advisory body he was trying to convene, Clemons sets him straight, noting Article 374 of the Honduran Constitution bars any attempt to alter presidential term limits. Period.

And, I also referred to Zelaya’s Wiki bio; he’s not a choir boy.

“American” cites Counterpunch for a lot of his information. Now, at times, Counterpunch is very good; it’s on my links list, in fact. It goes where more staid folks like The Nation and Mother Jones don’t. But, at times, Counterpunch prints more than its share of conspiracy theorizing and near-conspiracy theorizing.

“James” from the comment thread above possibly has the best read on the situation:

I think that Alvaro Vargas Llosa has the most spot on description of these events. This was a trap that military walked straight into, turning an unpopular authoritarian who was attempting to break the law into a hero of democracy.

Here’s Lhosa’s NY Times column, where he ultimately opines that there are no winners in this situation. (That then said, Vargas Llosa is a flak for paleoconservative/libertarian economics.)

And, speaking of two non-Counterpunch magazines that go beyond Democratic Party liberalism, The Nation does have several pieces. A John Nichols blog is worth reading more for comments than Nichols’ post. Some commenters, unlike John, grasp the complexities involved.

Others, though, claim that Zelaya not only was not a candidate in November, he couldn’t have made himself one.

Oh, really? If he could take one step against the Honduran Constitution, why not a second?

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Update, Sept. 6, 2017: Per Wiki, I now call it a coup, as I have for more than 18 months. It's convoluted, and neither side is that much in the right, but there you are.

Related to that, as I've moved from left-liberal to some kind of leftist, I have to note that, while Steve Clemons is very insightful, and surely is on the letter of Honduran law, he's also very much inside the bipartisan foreign policy establishment.