The Mullahs Best Friend In LatAm has announced he will do whatever he can to "abort" the military coup which displaced Honduran president and Chavez' buddy, Manuel Zeylaya, early today. Chavez also warned the Honduran military that any attempt to harm or kidnap his ambassador in that country will be met by force.
Chavez must feel he is riding a high of (probably manufactured) public support given the demonstration by his supporters against the only ant-government TV station still on the air in the oil powered new socialist paradise of South America. It might be mentioned that the latest piece of Chavez posturing comes on the heels of the Obama administration's decision to put our mission in Caracas back on the ambassadorial level and only weeks after President Obama poured love and smiles on the far-left leaning and profoundly anti-American Chavez.
Can we say, "Spanner in the works?"
The rhetorical tirade launched as is usual on nationwide television by Chavez calls into question the value of Mr Obama's search for "engagement" in lieu of the previous administration's confrontational approach to the chest-thumping former paratrooper turned president morphed into dictator. In this context in might be mentioned that Chavez hinted darkly that the US was somehow behind the military coup.
Hugo's suspicions run counter to the reality that the US has worked to stave off the coup over the past several days. While the Honduran president is no friend of the US, there is no longing in Washington for regime change. Even if such is the desire of the Honduran political elite.
The deposed president is the primary proximate cause of his own involuntary plane ride to Costa Rica. In an attempt to emulate the success of his supporter and role model, Hugo Chavez, Sr. Zelaya sought to ram through a referendum which would have changed the Honduran constitution approved some twenty years ago so as to allow him to run for re-election when his term ends next January. The referendum was declared illegal by the Honduran congress and supreme court.
The position taken by the Honduran congress and supreme court represent the political elite which has never had much, if any, use for Zelaya. His support comes from the non-elte in the country. There is no doubt that the lot of the average Honduran is not good. Crime, particularly homicide as well as drug traffic, particularly cocaine, run rampant in the country, which was recently ranked by the World Bank well below the median of 209 countries rated in security.
The reduction of remittances from Honduran illegal workers in the US has had a dramatic, even devastating, impact on the nation's economy. And, the average Honduran, elite or not, is very well aware of the realities in which they live.
So also is the ambitious Sr Zeyala who, like the majority of wannabe dictators of the left, wants to be a transformational figure--or at least the Big Enchilada. Riding the wave of discontent rising from the lower, alienated, and hopeless portions of the population is the time-honored way to gain power for life. This is what lies behind the proposal for the referendum.
It is both unfortunate and predictable that the Honduran army which, like the majority of armies through the sweep of LatAm history is the protector of both the privileged and the status quo, intervened as it did. Pressure from the Organization of American States and the US might reverse the coup. (Note: the US is far and away Honduras' largest trading partner.) But, the Chavez saber rattling will not.
If the Great Man of the Bolivarian Revolution has any grip on reality he is well aware of this. After all, how is he going to project force into Honduras? What will his Russian supplied naval vessels do if the US Navy interposes itself? Come in shooting? Or, will he use the nation's airborne forces? And, if the US says, "No," then what?
OK, Hugo, the Geek agrees you are trying to get up there with Iran and North Korea. But, you have a long, long way to go. Iran is a genuine and growing threat to regional and, potentially, world peace. North Korea is a well established player of global extortion with a degree of resolve behind its apparent lunacy which is both well-honed and developed.
Venezuela, however, under the inspired revolutionary leadership of Hugo Chavez, is not even into the minor leagues of global troublemaker. That may change given the regime's ties with Iran and its proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as its willingness and ability to foster and protect the international traffic in illegal drugs.
But, for the moment, the Chavez regime would be best off building its capacity for future bad acting and keeping a lid on premature bluster. There is nothing more damaging to a regional problem child than having its poor manners greeted by derisive laughter and not the sound of knees knocking.
2 comments:
"...the semi-dictator of Venezuela has ordered his military to stand by for a possible intervention in Honduras."
Used to be "...the mouse that roared", now, it seems to be "...the mouth that roared".
The "army" that Hugo would send wouldn't even qualify as a half serious joke. Now,if it was Columbian military, be worried. Those folks are tough and combat hardened. They've been through the fire.
I can see why Obama is upset - you have a situation where a chief executive tries to overreach, gets shut down by both the Congress and the supreme court, and then still decides he's arbitarily going to change the rules on an illegally called referendum.
Then, based upon his direct refusal to obey a supreme court order about the illegal referendum, the court orders him removed from office. And then the military removes him from office.
What's there for Obama to like? - sounds to me like they followed the rules down in Honduras.
One may not like the rules, but that's the way it works. Sometimes it plays to your side, and sometimes it does not.
But the rules still apply. And Obama should hope that this all goes away quickly, because if he gets his administration involved and decides to play some cards in Honduras, there's going to be lots and lots & LOTS of questions over why he's been MIA in Iran. If he's really smart, he doesn't want to go there. (In fairness, Obama's got the same Iran problem that previous POTUS have had - what are you really going to do? - but does he really want to admit that he's going to be ineffective regarding Iran?)
And btw, it's stuff like this little tempest in a teapot (Honduras) that can easily derail an activist domestic agenda, particularly when it's been a fight from the start, and it's getting tougher. You don't want to give all the different congress critters reasons to vote against your agenda.
Just let it be known that any unidentified flights coming from Venezuela or Cuba will be identified as "terrorist" and will accidently be "removed" from the sky. Same thing applies to naval vessels (What, we accidently launched a harpoon! Oh well, hope it doesn't hit anything". Oops - sorry about that! Hope it didn't leave too much of a mark").
Right on, brother! Of course some domestic agendas do deserve to be run off the rails. And, impotence need not be announced, its existence is all to self-evident. But, at least the American form of bluster is not so abrasive as that of the opposition and the assorted small scale, as you put it, "mouths that roared."
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