Responses to the Coup d'etat in Honduras on Sunday June 28, with special emphasis on producing English-language versions of commentaries by Honduran scholars and editorial writers and addressing the confusion encouraged by lack of basic knowledge about Honduras.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Lagos: "Micheletti does things he shouldn't."

Tuesday, Ricardo Lagos, a member of the Verification commission, in an interview, said of Zelaya, "It's not that he doesn't want to negotiate, it's that Micheletti does things that he shouldn't, like saying 'I'm going to form a National Unity Government' and a National Unity Government must be made by both parties."

"It is a shame, we haven't advanced everything that we would have liked...The last thing we lose should be hope. I call on both parties to maintain the possibility, the open call to possibly come to a consensus."

By now Craig Kelly has heard this, since Zelaya firmly rejected his offer last night.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

And Micheletti has a nice big fat photo of Craig Kelly shaking his hand (as Micheletti mugs for the camera) to counter anything that State might say about not being totally on board.

It's as if State had a script in which everything was supposed to end up happily resolved, and now that it's off the rails, they're not editing the script in the slightest, just woodenly playing it through. So, as (metaphorically speaking) cars plunge off cliffs, airplanes are struck by lightning and spin out of control, and baby strollers slip out of the horrified mothers's grasp and plunge down California Street, in center stage the happy couple is chuckling over the decision to invite cousin Bernie to the wedding, because he's such a scamp when the Scotch is out.

If our government is going to be evil b-----s, you'd think they could be competent evil b-----s.

--Charles

RNS said...

You can't mix words like "competent" and our State Department leadership in Washington, DC. There are many individual competent people in the State Department, but the leadership is inherently political and uninformed. They don't listen to the competent people, and formulate policy based on domestic politics, not achieving the aims of our foreign policy.

Why else would Jim Demint, the ultimate ignorant idiot, be setting Clinton's foreign policy? He knows nothing about Honduras. Nothing.

Domestic politics ruined the State Department. We got Clinton instead of someone with real international relations experience like Richardson. Why? Because Obama had a political problem to solve, how to contain the conservative contingent of the democratic party.

On a recent trip to El Salvador an embassy staffer told me the real problem was that Hondurans are lazy, that they'd rather take the risk of going to the US and working in a higher paying job than look into working for a maquila in their own country! That's lazy?? No, that's patronizing tinged with contempt.

Anonymous said...

[snark] Yeah, the immigrants who leave a trail of bleached bones through the Arizona desert are "lazy," too. [/snark]

It grieves me deeply that ultimately this whole mess comes down to whether Hondurans get paid 50 cents an hour or 90 cents an hour. It's not like either one is enough to live on. I can't believe that the domestic political costs of 90 cents an hour are so high as to throw American diplomatic soft power on the pyre.