Undermine our allies. Embolden our enemies. Diminish our country.

Obama Doctrine ‘coup’

By Frank Gaffney Jr.
Monday, November 2, 2009

Undermine our allies. Embolden our enemies. Diminish our country. If anyone doubted those nine words summed up the Obama Doctrine, look at what the President’s team perpetrated last week in Honduras.

Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon and the National Security Council’s Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Dan Restrepo, visited the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, on Wednesday to compel the country’s recalcitrant democrats to make a deal with the man the latter had lawfully removed from the presidency on June 28th. It remains to be seen whether, pursuant to this deal, ex-President Manuel Zelaya will now be - as he claims - restored to power. What is already unmistakable, though, is that it is better to be a foe of America than its friend.

The Obama administration has been on the wrong side in this affair from the moment the Honduran supreme court and congress acted as required by their nation’s constitution in the face of Zelaya’s effort to engineer an illegal second term. Instead of standing with those who lawfully protected democracy, President Obama and his minions immediately joined the region’s authoritarians - including notably Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Cuba’s Castro brothers - in declaring Zelaya a victim of a “coup.â€