The Wall Street Journal, hardly pals with Team Obama, credits the administration with pulling the Honduran iron out of the fire via a face-saving compromise that likely will prevent Chavista Manuel Zelaya from retaining power:
The big news in Honduras is that the good guys seem to have won a four-month political standoff over the exile of former President Manuel Zelaya. Current President Roberto Micheletti agreed yesterday to submit Mr. Zelaya's request for reinstatement as president to the Supreme Court and Congress, and in return the U.S. will withdraw its sanctions and recognize next month's presidential elections.
Mr. Zelaya, whose term would have expired in January, isn't likely to be reinstated, given that the court has twice ruled against his right to remain in office. The Honduran Congress, which voted in June to remove Mr. Zelaya, will then use that high court's opinion to decide if he should be restored to power.
The agreement impliedly recognizes that Zelaya was deposed legally and thus is not automatically entitled to reinstatement. The November 29 elections will go forward. If reinstated--unlikely in that the Supreme Court & Congress approved Zelaya's ouster in the first place--Zelaya would serve until late January. But he is not then out of the woods:
Washington and the Organization of American States have now promised to send observers and recognize the elections; there will be no amnesty for Mr. Zelaya if he is charged with a crime; and the zelayistas will renounce their plans to call for a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution. If Mrs. Clinton wants to call this a victory, it is—for Honduras.
WSJ South America pundit Mary Anastasia O'Grady hopes the new policy holds, but reminds us how awful US policy was, and how hated by most locals our current Ambassador there now is:
The need to dictate to Hondurans how to run their country has been the problem from the start. The moment the Honduran Supreme Court ordered the arrest of Mr. Zelaya in June for organizing mob violence and attempting to overthrow the constitution Mr. Llorens anointed himself colonial viceroy in charge of imposing U.S. will. Plenty of Molotov-hurling leftists also took Mr. Zelaya's side. But Mr. Llorens staked out a position for the U.S., defending the legitimacy of the erratic former president. The U.S. ambassador used every weapon he could lay his hands on to try to force the country to restore Mr. Zelaya to power.
This violated Honduran sovereignty. But Mr. Llorens's boss back home, Barack Obama, seemed more interested in appeasing U.S. enemies than standing by friends, or even sticking to his pledge not to meddle in other countries' affairs. Mr. Chávez and Fidel Castro were supporting Mr. Zelaya, and Mr. Obama apparently wanted to be part of the gang.
Clearly no one in Washington expected it to be so hard to break the will of Hondurans. That effort became even more embarrassing when zelayistas mounted a campaign of terror, kidnapping and murdering Honduran authorities and their relatives. There were at least three such incidents in two weeks. The terrorists were also sabotaging the country's electricity grid. To avoid further taint, the U.S. sent a delegation to strike the compromise reached late Thursday.
If O'Grady's pessimism proves unwarranted--and the fact that the new agreement prevents Zelaya from seeking a constitutional amendment to abolish the one-term limit for Presidents is a positive sign--then Team Obama no longer follows in the foolish footsteps of President Bush, whose administration promoted and accepted the 2006 Palestinian election won by Hamas. 43 did not grasp that promotion of democracy, while often in America's interest, is not always so. Hitler was elected in 1933. Should we have promoted him then?
Election of totalitarian, terrorist or thug leaders is not in our interest. America's interest lies in promoting liberal democracy, not illiberal varieties--especially if they intend to spread noxious democratic forms. America can accept unfriendly democracies that do not destroy democracy that do not spread tyranny, terror, subversion and the like. Think India from 1950 until the fall of the Berlin Wall. For those four decades India, a democracy save for 21 months in 1975-1977, was aligned with the former Soviet Union. India bought Russian military equipment and voted against America in the United Nations, and in 1974 joined the nuclear club. We did--rightly--live with this. India still was a relatively liberal democracy.
But aiding a Chavista coming to power in Central America would have been democracy for dummies only. Praise be to Team Obama for finding an exit strategy in Honduras that protects American interests. If Team Obama wishes to save political & diplomatic face while so doing, OK by me--the best is enemy of the good.
Bottom Line. Team Obama should take the lesson that Team Bush never fully absorbed: America's interest in promoting democracy extends only to liberal democracies. Democracies that fall into the three Ts--totalitarian, terrorist and thuggish--need not apply for our help.
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