As you know, three months ago, the democratically elected president of Honduras was overthrown in a military coup. Back then cartoons such as the one in this post were widespread among conservatives in the USA. The automatic charge was that Zelaya was a leftist and that President Obama was merely backing a fellow leftist. There was even one cartoon which showed President Chávez of Venezuela, Fidel Castro from Cuba, etc., along with President Obama speaking out in support of President Zelaya. The message was clear. Only leftists support President Zelaya. What was President Zelaya’s crime? Uhm, he wanted a referendum to change the Constitution of Honduras to allow him to run for a second term. That may have been personal aggrandizement, but not necessarily radical stuff.
I have been present during two revolutions, both against right-wing dictators. One was the revolution against President Batista of Cuba. That was the revolution that brought in Fidel Castro. The Cuban people ended up trading a right-wing dictator who oppressed the people with a left-wing dictator who oppressed the people. But, the second one was the Peruvian uprising of 2000 which began the opposition to President Alberto Fujimori’s of Peru and led to the current democratic government. Within the last couple of days, ex-President Fujimori pleaded guilty to various charges. He is 71 and apparently somewhat sick. And, no, I do not excuse him. Remember, he has plead guilty.
But, the other side is that I have also lived under one left-wing dictatorship and been present to see the aftermath of terrorist attacks by a left-wing group, the Shining Path guerrillas of Perú. I can remember as a child in Cuba going to visit a friend and arriving at an empty house with a seal across the front door. When I told my mother about it, she looked scared and told me never to return to that house. When we were in Perú as missionaries, I rode a mule every few weeks to visit a Quechua village in the Andes mountains of southern Perú. One time, the message came, in careful non-specific wording, that told me not to come under any circumstance. Later I found out that a Shining Path column was traveling through the area. Should I mention that Shining Path guerrillas killed at least 400 priests, monks, nuns, and pastors? They also killed tens of thousands of other people.
This is what I have learned from my life experiences. It does not matter whether the bullet comes from the left-wing or the right-wing. You are equally dead!
So here is the problem I have with the Honduras situation. The news reports from today say that the Honduras military has silenced two radio stations because they supported President Zelaya. In other words freedom of the press only applies if one agrees with the Honduran military. Moreover, the Brazilian Embassy is hosting President Zelaya, despite the fact there has yet to be any accusation that Brazil is a leftist controlled country.
As Americans we say that we believe in democracy, freedom of the press, and the right of the people to elect a government. We only limit that with our statement in the Declaration of Independence that the people have the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We further limit that with the Bill of Rights, which add several other rights to the list.
That means that we have to give the benefit of the doubt to an elected leader. But, here is the major problem I have. As we watch the Honduras military acting like a typical right-wing dictatorship, what is the excuse for American conservatives to back a coup over against a democratically elected president? Did he want to change the Constitution? Yes! By what means? Uhm, by a democratic vote. So, let me ask you, what is so wrong with a democratic vote that one must support a military coup? Or is it that opposition to President Obama justifies approving a coup against a democratically elected government?
But, even worse, oh American backers of the coup, are you willing to take moral responsibility for the repression that the Honduran people are experiencing? Are you willing to support the idea that a democratic vote ought to be suppressed by military might? Are you of the opinion that the Brazilian Embassy in Honduras ought to hand over the President of Honduras to a quick trial and an even quicker jail sentence or death sentence? What evidence do you have that President Zelaya intended to suspend the Honduran constitution?
But here is my final question. Under what Orthodox theology do you justify the overthrow of an elected government? Under what Orthodox theology do you support the overthrow, arrest and trial of a person who has committed no crime but is only accused of a possible future crime?
A broader question: Is there such a thing in Orthodox theology as a just war? If so, does it relate in any way to the overthrow of a government, elected or unelected? How do you deal with an unrighteous or unjust government?
On your last question, there was a sci-fi movie where just such a scenario was the plot. I don’t remember the title.
Just some easy simple questions for you.
Fr, Orthohippo
At the time that St. Augustine of Hippo wrote about just war theory, there was only one Church and would be only one Church for close to 600 years more. So, both the East and West inherit their theories of just war from St. Augustine. However, it was the West that developed the more formal codes of war. And, almost all countries have signed the Geneva conventions on treatment of prisoners, etc.
At the time of the writings on just war, the democracies of Greece were just a historical memory. There was no theology or philosophy that dealt with the overthrow of an unjust government. When one reads Saint Paul in Romans 13, he seems to assume that if a government is, it comes from God and that, therefore, it ought to be obeyed even if it is an unjust government. This does not mean that every unjust law must be obeyed, and there are many martyrs who prove so, but it does seem to assume that overthrow is not right.
A philosophy of overthrow does not develop for over a thousand years more. It is a subject that is basically not well dealt with. If you overthrew the rightful ruler and set up your own government, and managed to hold on, eventually the countries you dealt with simply accepted the situation.
Though I have been Anglican for some time (a group started in schism from Rome) I was trained as a Lutheran (Rome left Lutherans who then become a formal group. finally). In Lutheran theology, the concept of a just war and reaction to an unjust government is more firmly defined, if still subject to much interpretation.
By your analysis, Casto’s Cuba is illegitimate, theoretically, as he overthrew Batista. (I assume Batistia was elected.
Another thorny problem, nowhere adequately dealt with, is an election winner by ballot fraud.
Well, actually, even the USA was considered illegitimate at first, with only France recognizing us. But once a government is established for a while it tends to be recognized. You are right, there is no good theology (or philosophy) that gives us perfect rules for takeovers and revolutions.
What Zelaya did was a crime. He illegally tried to subvert the Honduran Constitution and establish himself as a (more than likely) lifelong President.
There was no coup. His own party, backed by the Honduran Supreme Court had him arrested and deported.
The ballots that Zelaya was to use in his illegal power grab were printed in Venezuela, where a far left ally in Chavez resides.
The person who replaced Zelaya was in his own party. This hardly qualifies as a coup.
It is shameful that the U.S. and other governments are not backing the legal actions of Honduras acted upon to preserve their democracy.
From a Dennis Prager article (Prager went to Honduras shortly after Zelaya was deported) :
Here, in brief, are the facts. You decide.
The president of Honduras, Jose Manuel Zelaya, a protege of Hugo Chavez, decided that he wanted to be able to be president for more than his one term that ends this coming January — perhaps for life. However, because the histories of Honduras and Latin America are replete with authoritarians and dictators, Honduras’s constitution absolutely forbids anyone from governing that country for more than one term.
So, Zelaya decided to follow Chavez’s example and find a way to change his country’s constitution. He decided to do this on his own through a referendum, without the congressional authorization demanded by Honduras’s constitution. He even had the ballots printed in Venezuela.
As Mary Anastasia O’Grady, who writes The Americas column in the Wall Street Journal, explains: “A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress. But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on his own and had Mr. Chavez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela.”
The Honduras Supreme Court ruled Zelaya’s nonbinding referendum unconstitutional, and then instructed the military not to implement the vote as it normally does. When the head of the armed forces obeyed the legal authority, the Honduran Supreme Court, rather than President Zelaya, the president fired him and personally led a mob to storm the military base where the Venezuela-made ballots were being safeguarded.
As Jorge Hernandez Alcerro, former Honduran ambassador to the United States, wrote, “Mr. Zelaya and small segments of the population tried to write a new constitution, change the democratic system and seek his re-election, which is prohibited by the constitution.”
In order to stop this attempt to subvert the Honduran constitution, while keeping Honduras under the rule of law and preventing a Chavez-like dictatorship from developing in its country, the Honduran Supreme Court ordered the military to arrest Zelaya. They did so and expelled him to neighboring Costa Rica to prevent certain violence.
Was this a “military coup” as we understand the term? Columnist Mona Charen answered this best: “There was an attempted coup in Honduras, but it was Zelaya who initiated it, not his opponents.”
Or, to put in another way: When did a military coup ever take place that was ordered by that country’s supreme court, that was supported by the political party of the president who was overthrown, in which not one person was injured, let alone killed, and which replaced the ousted the president with the president of the country’s congress, a member of the same party as the ousted president? But none of this matters to the United Nations, which never met a left-wing tyrant it didn’t find appealing. That is why the president of the U.N. General Assembly, a former Sandinista foreign minister, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, accompanied Zelaya in the airplane on Zelaya’s first attempt to return to Honduras on July 5. (Brockmann, among his other radical moral positions, is so virulently anti-Israel that the Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations threatened not to attend the U.N. Holocaust Memorial Day event if Brockmann showed up.)
And none of this matters to the OAS, which just lifted its ban on Cuba’s membership and which says nothing about Chavez’s shutting down of Venezuela’s opposition radio and television stations.
And none of this matters to the world’s left-wing media. Thus, on July 1, a writer for the United Kingdom newspaper The Guardian penned this insight: “There is no excuse for this coup. … The battle between Zelaya and his opponents pits a reform president who is supported by labor unions and social organizations against a Mafia-like, drug-ridden, corrupt political elite.” To the Guardian writer, Zelaya was a “reform president.” Lenin’s useful idiots never die out.
And the Los Angeles Times editorial page wrote: “Even though the Honduran Congress and military may believe they are defending the country against a would-be dictator, the ends don’t justify the means.”
Quite a great deal of foolishness in one sentence. That the Los Angeles Times does not believe that Zelaya is a would-be dictator is mind-numbing. As for the cliche that “the ends don’t justify the means,” in fact they quite often do. That is one of the ways in which we measure means. One assumes that while the Los Angeles Times believes that Americans should be law-abiding, it agrees with Rosa Parks having broken the law. The ends (fighting segregation) justified the means (breaking the law).
If Honduras is hung out to dry, if America suspends trade and economic aid, the forces arrayed against liberty in Latin America will have won a major victory. On the other hand, if Honduras is not abandoned now, those Iran-supporting, America-hating, liberty-loathing forces will have suffered a major defeat.
Even members of the Obama administration recognize this. As quoted in the Washington Post, Jeffrey Davidow, a retired U.S. ambassador who served as President Obama’s special adviser for the recent Summit of the Americas, said:
“The threats against democracy in Latin America … are not those coming from military coups, but rather from governments which are ignoring checks and balances, overriding other elements of government.”
Let your representatives in Congress know that America needs to stand with liberty, not with Castro, Ortega, Zelaya, Chavez, the OAS, and the U.N. And buy Honduran goods. I am smoking a terrific Honduran cigar as I write these words: G-d bless Honduras.
Interesting how your argument boils down to every country in the world is wrong, since you reject the Organization of American States and the United Nations, and only conservative commentators are correct. Somehow you also manage to connect supporting a military coup with Iran, America, and liberty.
The problem is that ultimately while one branch of government may rule against another, like the Honduran Supreme Court did, it is against the law in Honduras and other democratic countries to overthrow a sitting president by military coup. Every democratic country has ways of taking a sitting president to trial if there is sufficient evidence, but that was not done.
And, that is the problem. President Zelaya may very well have been planning all that conservative commentators claim. Or he may not have been. But, since he was never taken to court and charged, as the Honduran constitution allows, all that we have is the unsubstantiated opinion of commentators.
Moreover, a putative evil was replaced with an actual, real, functioning evil. Look at the fifth paragraph or simply go to any of the major news media. The Honduran military is shutting down newspapers. You have supported the replacement of a possible threat by a real threat. Just because it is a right-wing military do you justify their actions? Is it OK to force the closing of two newspapers even though that is against Honduran law? You wrote many paragraphs about what might have been and conveniently ignore what is.
Does this mean that you follow the idea that a right-wing military controlled government is better than a possible left-wing democratically elected government? If so, are you saying that democracy is only for the right-wing?
Remember what one of the main points of my article was, “This is what I have learned from my life experiences. It does not matter whether the bullet comes from the left-wing or the right-wing. You are equally dead!”
I didn’t say that every country in the world is wrong.
I said that this man is trying to subvert justice and the constitution and that even his own party was in on getting him lawfully removed.
What is it that makes you want to side with the leftists who would install him (Zelaya) for life?
What makes you side with the likes of the Castros and Hugo Chavez?
The OAS isn’t concerned with democracy.
Many governments in the region aren’t concerned with democracy.
I would go alone rather than side with tyrants. Just look at the farce in thye U.N.. Tyrants get their way much of the time. They do not stop wars, but rather facilitate them and the spread of totalitarian regimes.
You can have the Cubas of the world. I’ll stand with the countries that are not perfect, but that are more like us. Although, that is getting increasing hard to say in this brand new post American day.
Funny I thought I was siding with Brazil and the other countries of the OAS, unless now Brazil is also on your leftist list? Hmm, the OAS is not concerned with democracy? That is certainly a brand new claim! I was in Perú when the OAS ruled against Fujimori on the attempted silencing of some of his rivals. And, the OAS has stood against the Honduras situation because the rule of law was broken. Honduras’ own constitution, like the Peruvian one, and like our own, allows for the impeachment and trial of a president. The law was not followed.
So, here is my question to you? Does the rule of law only apply sometimes? If President Zelaya is guilty of all that you said, he should have been impeached and tried, just like Perú did with Fujimori. But, they did not. That is why they have been condemned across the board, not just by the Cubas and the Venezuelas. Funny, I thought that conservatives supported the rule of law?
We cannot allow democracy to be usurped any time someone from the opposite party decides that the current legitimately elected president of a country may take that country on a path they do not like. You may not want the Cubas and Venezuelas and neither do I. But neither do I want the likes of a Chile under Pinochet or Brazil back when it was under the military or Argentina under the colonels.
Remember my point, you are equally dead either way, regardless of whether the bullet comes from the left or the right.
The last time I checked, people weren’t risking their lives to get into Cuba and Venezuela and Ecuador.
But they still come to the U.S. in droves.
Imperfect democracies need to be backed over left wing thugocracies.
Again, you are trying to force a point. The entire OAS condemned the action. This has nothing to do with Cuba or Venezuela. Perú condemned it also and they are busily trying their former president, for instance.
And, does it matter whether Zelaya is left or right? He was legitimately elected. Are people only allowed to choose conservatives? What you are saying is that if in the view of some a legitimately elected president tries to take the country in a particular political direction, then it is permitted to overthrow him without trial.
Remember, you yourself pointed out that he was turned down by the courts. You yourself pointed out that he was unsuccessful in his attempt to get to the ballots. You yourself pointed out that he had lost the backing of his party. The next step was impeachment and trial, not the breaking of the rule of law, not yet another coup de etat.
He engaged in an attempt to subvert the Honduran constitution. he was unsuccesful because he was stopped and deported.
I would imagine that the Hondurans took the steps they did to preserve their democracy, not endanger it.
This man wanted to undo it.
That countries line up one way or another does not answer the question of what is right or not. Look at the U.S.. We are on the wrong side of the issue.
You presume to know moe about the Honduran constitution than their own Supreme Court.
It blows my mind that you would take the side of someone who is after bald power and attempting to install themselves as a Castro style “leader” for life.
I mean it. It blows my mind.
Nope, I am on the side of the rule of law. Precisely because I come from Latin America, I know how seductive the argument is that you have to break a constitution in order to save the country. We have over a century of experience in making that argument in country after country. It is a seductive argument that almost inevitably leads to the establishment of some type of dictatorship of either the left or the right.
And, the Honduran Supreme Court ruled against President Zelaya’s referendum. They did not rule that he was to be overthrown.
The point that many countries are making is that there was a legal mechanism to force President Zelaya out and that the legal mechanism was not used. That is why Brazil is housing Zelaya now, not because they agree with him but because what was done was wrong.
Read back again. I have never said that I agreed with him. I said that what was done was illegal and that I agree with the OAS and the USA that he needs to be reinstated. Then, if they wish, they can follow their legal steps for impeachment and trial.
Meanwhile, Chavez (Zelaya’s buddy) continues to shut down radio and television stations that criticize him.
Yes, and he is every bit as equally wrong as the Honduran military forces. Please notice that it is not President Zelaya doing the shutting down, it is the conservatives who are doing it in Honduras. Let me again repeat one of my points. A conservative oligarchy is every bit as bad and deadly as a leftist oligarchy. And, a country in which the newspapers are being shut down by the military is not a true democracy, is it?
You see how quickly the line that the country must be saved by removing the President morphs into the country must be saved by shutting down any opposition news media. How long will it be until it becomes the country must be saved by shooting those who oppose us?
You see, that is a regular part of our history too.
We will have to agree to disagree.
I think the Honduran Supreme court acted legally to keep a leftist tyrant from hijacking their country.
You would out the hijacker back in office.
The big problems in the region come from the lefists. They are the ones installing themselves permanently and shuting down the voices that would oppose them.
The ‘forever ruler’ club are the ones that need to be reigned in.
Thanks, very much.
Gotta run.
I have read these comments with interest especially after the passage of time. The one key factor I do not see mentioned anywhere is that the Honduran Constitution specifically provides for the removal of a President if he breaks the law. In the interpretation of the Supreme Court Zelaya was attempting to hold a vote without the assent of the Board of Elections, an act which is illegal under Honduran law. Under the Constitution the President can be removed without the requirement for an impeachment. Unusual but nevertheless it is the law. So the action of the military in removing Zelaya and ejecting him from the country was quite constitutional and in no way a coup, not withstanding the almost universal condemnation of their act. Probably not the first nor the last time that the world’s governments and press allowed a raft of ignorance to get between them and the truth.