Paraphrased excerpts from: Las dos caras de Obama en Honduras/ The two faces of Obama in Honduras, by Carlos Rivera Lugo, from: Communist Party Peru

Paraphrased excerpts from "Las dos caras de Obama en Honduras"/
"The two faces of Obama in Honduras"
By: Carlos Rivera Lugo, Professor of Philosophy & Legal Theory, Puerto Rico,
Partido Communista Peruano
http://pcperuano.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=865:carlos-rivera&catid=3:internacional&Itemid=28

Clarity

One month into the coup in Honduras, the battlefield will determine with greater clarity. At the beginning of the crisis, on June 28, there seemed to be unanimous agreement among all the governments of the Americas to condemn the coup, rejecting it's claim to govermental legitimacy by the immediate and unconditional restoration of constitutional President Manuel Zelaya Rosales. However, with the passing of the days and weeks, the unanimity has been broken after diplomatic maneuvering by The United States to reinstate the conflict within its traditional imperial strategy.


The United States foreign policy towards Latin America seems to run on two tracks: one based on the rhetoric of President Barack Obama for a new relationship with our America that respects the sovereignty and self-determination, and one based on the continuation of the same expansionist and interventionist practices by the Pentagon, the State Department and U.S. intelligence agencies. In the case of Honduras, the rhetoric of Obama stands out by its insubstantial inconsistency compared to the blunt force of incidents perpetrated by his government's diplomacy with its imperial arrogance . For this, the most important objective is to meet the imperative standards established by the OAS unanimously to restore immediately and without restrictions the constitutional president of Honduras, but to isolate the group of countries belonging to the ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America), led by Venezuela's Hugo Chávez ,and among others, Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua,-- the US government repressed all enemies under the previous foreign policy of George W. Bush and, by all indications, is also doing so also under the government of Obama. In respect to Honduras, under the chairmanship of Zelaya... U.S. foreign policy has been given the task of actively promoting a solution to the conflict that for all practical purposes, legitimizes the aims of the coup in Honduras to halt the agenda of change represented by their government.


This duality that characterizes the foreign policy of the US government projects Obama on the one hand - a leader that is projected as a conciliator but who in fact allowed those forces within the power structure in Washington that continue in a thousand ways advocating and practicing, both overtly and covertly, the same old power politics as usual. It is the policy of "the carrot and stick '...The results are the same: the disastrous U.S. intervention and continuity of policies defined strictly from the standpoint of its imperial and strategic interests in total disregard of the sovereign will expressed by our people.


Hillary Clinton Obama's diplomatic leader, has proclaimed that "the question is not whether the U.S. can or should lead, but as a leader in the twenty-first century." In this regard she added that "The U.S. has an opportunity and a profound responsibility to exercise American leadership to resolve problems in concert with others. This is the heart of America's mission in the world today. " In any case, for good or bad, United States is now proposing to exercise hegemony over the new multipolar world that has been settling.


Hence in the past few days Clinton has passed the half-hearted condemnation of the coup to delay the effective return of Zelaya in Honduras and his return as president with all its constitutional prerogatives. The US strategy to support the coup plotters was veiled behind the mediating efforts of Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, who sadly has been chosen to serve as a blunt instrument of U.S. diplomacy...

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* The author of the original article is Professor of Philosophy and Legal Theory and State Law School, Eugenio Maria de Hostos in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. He is also a member of the Board of Directors and permanent collaborator on the weekly Puerto Rican journal, "Clarity."