Lawyers, Guns and Money: A Coup Tests Obama's Will

Powerful special interests -- energy, coal, utilities, financial, pharmaceutical and insurance lobbies -- have flexed their muscles and confronted President Obama on the most important legislative priorities of his domestic agenda. But this kind of politics-by-influence-peddling doesn't stop at the water's edge. And in foreign policy, the consequences can be more immediately violent and deadly.

Meet Lanny Davis, Washington lawyer and lobbyist, former legal counsel to President Bill Clinton and avid campaigner for Hillary Clinton's presidential bid. He has been hired by a coalition of business interests to represent the dictatorship that ousted elected President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras in a military coup three weeks ago. President Zelaya was taken by soldiers at gunpoint from his home and removed to Costa Rica.

Davis is working with Bennett Ratcliff, another lobbyist with a close relationship to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a former senior executive for one of the most influential political and public relations firms in Washington's history. According to the New York Times, in current mediation efforts, the coup government did not make a move without first consulting Ratcliff.

Davis and Ratcliff have done an amazing public relations job so far. The average American believes that President Zelaya was ousted because he tried to use a referendum to extend his term of office. This is not only false but impossible. Zelaya's proposed referendum on the day of the coup was a non-binding poll of the electorate. It only asked voters if they wanted to have a real referendum on reforming the country's constitution, on the November ballot. Even if Zelaya had gotten everything he was looking for, a new president would have been elected on the same November ballot. So Zelaya would be out of office in January, no matter what steps were taken toward constitutional reform.

If we add together the high power lobbyists from the Clinton camp, Republican Senators and members of Congress, and conservatives within the State Department, the coup government has an awful lot of support from the U.S.

So it's up to President Obama to do the right thing. He can have the U.S. Treasury freeze the coup leaders' bank accounts and deny them visas to the U.S. He could also impose trade sanctions for any part of the 70 percent of Honduran trade that is with the United States. He would have worldwide support: both the Organization of American States and the U.N. General Assembly voted unanimously to demand the "immediate and unconditional" reinstatement of President Zelaya.

Almost all of the Latin American governments -- which are mostly left of center -- also sympathize with Zelaya because he is a reform president fighting against a corrupt oligarchy. In one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere, he raised the minimum wage by 60 percent and increased teachers' salaries and public pensions, as well as access to education. This is a classic Latin American coup in another sense: General Romeo Vazquez, who led it, is an alumnus of the United States' School of the Americas (renamed Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Co-operation). The school is best known for producing Latin American officers who have committed major human rights abuses, including military coups.

The coup government has shot and killed peaceful demonstrators, closed TV and radio stations and arrested journalists. Two political activists have been murdered.

During the 1980s, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency trained a military death squad -- the infamous battalion 316 -- that tortured and murdered hundreds of Honduran political activists. The U.S. embassy looked the other way and the State Department doctored its annual human rights reports to omit these crimes.

President Obama has so far been silent about the coup government's violence and censorship. This silence is very unfortunate and difficult to explain. The repression may worsen if -- as expected -- current mediation efforts fail and Zelaya returns to Honduras.

Obama needs to show that the United States is different than in the past by supporting Zelaya's return not just with words, but action. Anything less will look like complicity in the eyes of the world, especially given the coup government's friends in high places.

This column was published in the Los Angeles Times on July 23, 2009.

Comments

[crush2496]

This is the reason why Zelaya is not the president of Honduras anymore

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maMA3PTYoZE

[crush2496]

"Even if Zelaya had gotten everything he was looking for, a new president would have been elected on the same November ballot. So Zelaya would be out of office in January, no matter what steps were taken toward constitutional reform".
This is exactly what Chavez said when he was reinstated in power a long time ago. This is exactly what Ortega is saying now.
I think that you have done a lot of research and should know that what it almost happen in Honduras had happened already in some countries guess which ones. Step by Step.
Also, did you know that they found computers with the survey results giving him a win???? without running the survey.
Why he raised the minimun wage and why he gave so much money to the military forces and police? If you don't know the answer just look at the path followed in Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Ecuador and bolivia. It was not to help the poor. A lot of companies have to let go of their employees.

[Wozzeck]

`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'

From 'Through The Looking Glass', by Lewis Carroll.

[BKearney]

2 comments 2 wtf!!!!!!! how can this be so unimportant 1000's of comments for micheal jackson and some dude named jon who has a bunch of kids but for this crime against an entire country 2 good job huffpo'ers

[Ergon]

It''s spread across several threads.

[WindySailor]

Please give the late Warren Zevon credit when you use that line!

[RealSCProgressive]

As soon as I see or hear the words "oligarchies, " I immediately dismiss any arguments made by that person. PERIOD. "Oligarchies" is merely the code communist totalitarians and their sympathizers use to condemn the hard-working, middle-class people who are the backbone of any society. They are NOT progressives. Get that through your head - in no way is Hugo Chavez (or any of his rotten ilk) liberal or progressive. If you support him or his policies, you are not a liberal. You are a totalitarian. You support mob rule. You are a communist. If you want to be a communist, fine. Just don't continue to dissemble and hide behind the charade that you are liberal or progressive.

[Wozzeck]

When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'

From 'Through The Looking Glass', by Lewis Carroll.

[shorelive]

I suggest you go and look up the word "oligarch" if you think it refers to the middle class (very small in Honduras) or anything like it. It does exist, and it does exist to the extent that it can undermine democratic systems and the rule of law. That's the starting point for understanding the dynamics of a Honduras situation. Not Venezuela -- which has swung from one extreme of privilege to another extreme of populism. Neither extreme has any respect for the principles of democracy and the rule of law and just use the trappings of those institutions to further their own narrow ends.