TIME's Liberal Slant

[Dr. Shane]

Why Obama Won't Use the M-Word for Honduras' Coup

The Obama Administration tried again this week to take on the coupsters of Honduras. With more than two months passed since Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was exiled in a military ouster — and less than three months to go before his impoverished Central American nation holds new presidential elections — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton jabbed harder at the coup leaders to get them to let Zelaya back into Honduras and finish his democratically elected term. The U.S. cut all non-humanitarian aid to the de facto government, about $32 million; revoked the visas of all civilian and military officials who backed the June 28 coup, and threatened not to recognize the results of the Nov. 29 elections unless Zelaya is returned to office...

But the Administration also sent a significant mixed signal. It didn't use the m-word: Military. Its lawyers have determined that while Zelaya's overthrow was a coup d'etat, it was not technically a military coup. The main reason: even though soldiers threw Zelaya out of the country at gunpoint, in his pajamas, he was not replaced with a military leader. Instead, Micheletti, a civilian who headed Honduras' Congress, was made President. Other "complicating factors," as the U.S. calls them, include lingering questions about which Honduran institution — Congress, the Supreme Court or the Army — actually ordered Zelaya's removal after he openly defied a high court edict not to hold a non-binding referendum on constitutional reform.

The legal semantics matter. If the State Department labels a coup "military" — the most brutal and anti-democratic kind of overthrow — it automatically triggers a suspension of all non-humanitarian and non-democracy-related U.S. aid...

The Obama Administration has political reasons for eschewing the m-word. The most important is that calling an overthrow a military coup requires certification by Congress — where Obama and Clinton foresee a fight they'd rather avoid. Conservative Republicans are angry at Obama's support of Zelaya, who they insist was trying to remove presidential term limits in Honduras and usher in a socialist government like that of his oil-rich left-wing ally, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez...

Democratic Representative Howard Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, argued that whatever Zelaya's alleged infractions, they should have been addressed legally, not militarily. "It's time to call this bird what it is," a military coup, and move on with whatever tougher sanctions that might mean in order to get the Micheletti regime to back down, Berman wrote...

the problem is that the U.S. loses leverage in that process when, by not calling Zelaya's ouster a military coup, it gives coup leaders the impression that what they did was merely second- or third-degree coup-mongering instead of the first-degree military kind. When the military hauls away a democratically elected president, it's a military coup, period, regardless of who takes power afterward. It's a rule that needs to apply not just in Honduras, but whenever the U.S. has to take on coupsters.

[text taken from link - emphasis added]

[Dr. Shane]

Notice that here TIME Magazine is going after the Obama Administration because the Administration is not liberal enough for them. The Administration's lawyers have determined that what happened was not a military coup and the Administration has decided they do not want to debate the issue with Republicans in Congress. TIME Magazine isn't happy about that.

[Woody]

Yes dgrimmm. There is growing dissatisfaction with his policies.