“In fact, when it comes to U.S. policy in Latin America — as events this week in Honduras suggest — it's often hard to tell if George W. Bush isn't still President…. Coup-happy forces in other Latin American countries can only feel emboldened”Tim Padgett, Time Magazine
As an Obama volunteer in the New Hampshire primary, I had the good fortune to hear him speak at a rally in Keene. It was striking that the theme that absolutely electrified his diverse audience was his pledge to change the relationship of the US to the world.
We believed he would engage internationally in a very different way than had George Bush and by inference many of his predecessors. Because of his unusual heritage and experience, he would be the first post-cold war, post-interventionist President. .
Obama’s supporters obviously were not hearing everything he said, nor, as President, has Obama been hearing what the world is saying.
As deeply as it has disappointed many of his campaign stalwarts, we should have expected last week’s speech on Afghanistan given his frequent campaign contrasts between the good war there with the bad one in Iraq.
At the same time, we were justified in expecting better from his policy toward Latin America. Yet closest to home the White House is proving to be tone deaf, and unable to match its practice to high-minded rhetoric of mutual respect and non-imposition of US political values.
The Obama Administration's decision to embrace the compromised elections in Honduras drives a wedge between the US and the most powerful fully democratic and independent countries of the Hemisphere. It has prompted widespread disenchantment. Poor Tom Shannon; if right wing Republicans in the Senate finally let him be confirmed as ambassador to Brazil he will spend his tenure defending his role in legitimizing the golpistas at the most critical final moment.
How can the US avoid suspicion that Washington either was incompetent at brokering a smooth reversal of the coup or that our goal from the beginning was an anti-left transition managed by old friends in the oligarchy? Venezuela will gain sympathy for its charge that Obama is not such a big change after all.
The bottom line reality is that with two-thirds of the Honduran vote counted, only 49% of those eligible participated, a dramatic drop from the 62% figure spun on election day, and significantly down from the 55% turn-out in 2005. (Reports on actual vote here and here.)
The best non-violent solution I can imagine now is for President-elect Lobo to pledge to fully pardon Zelaya of the phony charges lodged by the coup makers and to make him responsible for organizing an assembly to rewrite the Constitution that was drafted by the last military junta. Otherwise disgruntled conservatives elsewhere in the Hemisphere may conclude that extra-constitutional removal of elected left governments is OK with Washington.
Obama’s policy toward Cuba is an equally distressing example of not hearing. I won’t repeat what I have written in previous blogs about the Administration’s defiant isolationism on the embargo or its unconscionable failure to restore even the semi-adequate Clinton policies on educational, cultural, religious and humanitarian travel. Suffice to say that Obama is paying a needless international price for his slow domestically driven Miami-centric approach to the most egregious example of old style Yanqui bullying.
With foreign policy as with health care, the Administration must be made aware that the patience of its supporters and allies is not limitless and can no longer be taken for granted. I read the message from Obama to Yoani and the comments by Speaker Pelosi as place holders at best and remain skeptical that Congress will adopt travel legislation unless the White House sends a signal.
The message could be private, but the President will only get the international credit he deserves and needs by acting forcefully to enable non-tourist travel and to endorse the pending legislation.
John McAuliff
Fund for Reconciliation and Development
Links
Christiane Amanpour presented two outstanding segments on travel to Cuba in her important Sunday afternoon CNN interview show. Speaking in the first segment were Representative Howard Berman and Jose Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch. In the second segment were Karel de Gucht, European Union Commissioner for Development, and Col. Larry Wilkerson of the New America Foundation.
Transcript of both segments here.
Video of Wilkerson and de Gucht here
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Motives for ending travel restrictions are varied. The most articulate proponents of the case that the freedom of Americans is the primary issue come from a libertarian perspective, as well articulated by the CATO Institute. Its December 2 Capitol Hill Briefing with Representative Jeff Flake (R-AZ); Phil Peters, Vice President, Lexington Institute; and Ian Vásquez, Director, Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity is worth watching for itself. Even more so because the Nuevo Herald published an AFP story which completely reversed Flake’s prediction of favorable prospects for passage of the travel legislation in the House. View it here.