This is the type of hypocritical leadership that has caused the United States to decline in public approval throughout the world under Obama -- ironic after his Nobel Peace Prize awarded within just months of his becoming President. On 10 December 2010, Gallup bannered "U.S. Leadership Ratings Suffer in Latin America," and reported that approval of "the job performance of the leadership of the United States" had declined since 2009 in 14 of 18 nations in the Western Hemisphere. It had declined steepest in Mexico, Argentina, Honduras, and Venezuela. Honduras, however, was the only country where approval of the U.S. was now even lower than it had been under George W. Bush in 2008. This Honduran plunge since the 2009 coup had been that steep. Then, on 19 April 2012, Gallup headlined "U.S. Leadership Losing Some Status," and reported that across 136 countries, approval of the U.S. had peaked in 2009 when George W. Bush was replaced by Obama, but that "the U.S. has lost some of its status" since 2009, and that the "U.S. Image Sinks in the Americas," down one-quarter from its 2009 high, though still not yet quite as low in most countries as it had been under Bush. Then, three months later, on June 13th, the PewResearch Global Attitudes Project headlined "Global Opinion of Obama Slips, International Policies Faulted," and reported that favorable opinion of the U.S. had sunk during Obama's first term. It declined 7% in Europe, 10% in Muslim countries, 13% in Mexico, and 4% in China. However, it increased 8% in Russia, and 13% in Japan. It went down in eight countries, and up in two, and changed only 2% or less in three nations.
The global fascist push to eliminate Zelaya's Presidency had first been well outlined by Greg Grandin in the Nation on 28 July 2009, headlining "Waiting for Zelaya." He wrote: "The business community didn't like Zelaya because he raised the minimum wage. Conservative evangelicals and Catholics -- including Opus Dei, a formidable presence in Honduras -- detested him because he refused to ban the "morning after' pill. The mining, hydroelectric and biofuel sector didn't like him because he didn't put state funds and land at their disposal. The law-and-order crowd hated him because he apologized on behalf of the state for a program of "social cleansing' that took place in the 1990s. ... Zelaya likewise moved to draw down Washington's military presence; Honduras, alone among Central American countries, hosts a permanent detachment of US troops." Later that same year (2009), John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, came out with his new Hoodwinked, in which he said (p. 213) : "I was told by a Panamanian bank vice president who wanted to remain anonymous, "Every multinational knows that if Honduras raises its hourly [minimum-wage] rate, the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean will have to follow. Haiti and Honduras have always set the bottom.'" The increase in Honduras's minimum wage was widely cited as having probably been the coup's chief source.
Zelaya offered an explanation as to why the U.S. helped the fascists. On 31 May 2011, "Democracy Now" radio headlined "Exclusive Interview with Manuel Zelaya on the U.S. Role in Honduran Coup," and Zelaya revealed that when he was abducted from his house, "We landed in the U.S. military base of Palmerola," before being flown from there out of the country, and that "Otto Reich started this." Reich had been the fanatical far-right Cuban-American who ran U.S. Latin-American policy for the Republican Reagan and both the father and son Bush Administrations, including Iran-Contra against Nicaragua (which helped Iran's mullahs), and the fascist 2002 coup against Venezuela's popular elected President Hugo Chavez, which coup was then peacefully overturned and reversed, due to worldwide repudiation of the junta everywhere except the U.S. Government. Zelaya said that the coup against himself had been organized via both Reich and the previous, George W. Bush-appointed, U.S. Ambassador to Honduras, Charles Ford, who had subsequently been appointed to "the U.S. Southern Command ... in order to prepare for the coup d'etat" in Honduras. Zelaya didn't personally blame Obama. "Even though Obama would be against the coup, the process toward the coup was already moving forward. ... They are even able to bend the arm of the President of the United States, President Obama, and the State Department." Zelaya portrayed a weak President Obama, not a complicit one. If this was true, then Lanny Davis was pushing against a weak leader, not against strong resistance within the then-new Democratic U.S. Administration. Hillary Clinton's press conference the day after the coup reflected unconcern regarding democracy, not (like with Republicans such as Sen. DeMint) outright support of fascism. The situation that was portrayed by Zelaya was a U.S. Government that was heavily infiltrated by fascists throughout the bureacracy, and a new Democratic President and Secretary of State who had no stomach to oppose fascists -- an Administration who were mere figureheads.
On 15 March 2012, Laura Carlson, at Foreign Policy In Focus, bannered "Honduras: When Engagement Becomes Complicity," and she opened: "U.S. Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Honduras on March 6 with a double mission: to quell talk of drug legalization and reinforce the U.S.-sponsored drug war in Central America, and to bolster the presidency of Porfirio Lobo. The Honduran government issued a statement that during the one-hour closed-door conversation between Biden and Lobo, the vice president "reiterated the U.S. commitment to intensify aid to the government and people of Honduras, and exalted the efforts undertaken and implemented over the past two years by President Lobo.' In a March 1 press briefing, U.S. National Security Advisor Tony Blinken cited "the tremendous leadership President Lobo has displayed in advancing national reconciliation and democratic and constitutional order.' You'd think they were talking about a different country from the one we visited just weeks before on a fact-finding mission on violence against women. What we found was a nation submerged in violence and lawlessness, a president incapable or unwilling to do much about it, and a justice system in shambles."
Carlson went on to note: "Land grabs to transfer land and resources from small-scale farmers, indigenous peoples, and poor urban residents into the hands of large-scale developers and megaprojects have generated violence throughout the country. Many of the testimonies of violence and sexual abuse that we heard from Honduran women regarded conflicts over land, where the regime actively supports wealthy interests against poor people in illegal land occupations for tourism, mining, and infrastructure projects, such as palm oil magnate Miguel Facusse's actions." She noted: "The United States helped deliver a serious blow to the Honduran political system and society. The United States has a tremendous responsibility for the disastrous situation." And she closed: "There's no excuse for spending U.S. taxpayer dollars on security assistance to Honduras as human rights violations pile up." She called this "A Coup for Criminals."
What Iran and Guatemala became to the historical record of Eisenhower's Presidency, Honduras will be to that of Obama. Sometimes even a small country, even a banana republic, can leave a big black mark on a President's record. Though Czechoslovakia was just a small and weak country, it's even what Britain's Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is primarily remembered for nowadays -- his yielding it to the fascists in 1938.
But there is yet another area in which Hillary Clinton's stay at the State Department was bad; and this one has been, and will be, disastrous:
On 26 July 2009, Marisa Taylor bannered at McClatchy Newspapers, "Why Are U.S.-Allied Refugees Still Branded as "Terrorists?'," and she reported that "DHS [Department of Homeland Security] is working with other agencies, such as the State Department, to come up with a solution" to the routine refusal of the United States to grant U.S. visas to translators and other local employees of the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan who wanted to move to the U.S. and who had overwhelming reason to fear retaliation from anti-Americans in their home countries after we left. The State Department did nothing. Then, Human Rights First headlined on 13 August 2009, "Senator Leahy on "Material Support' Bars," and reported that, "In a powerful statement submitted for the Congressional Record on August 5, 2009, Senator Leahy (D-VT) reaffirmed his commitment to "restore common sense' to the bars to refugee and asylum status based on associations with what the Immigration and Nationality Act defines as terrorism," which was "written so broadly" that it applied even to "children who were recruited against their will and forced to undergo military training, doctors (acting in accordance with the Hippocratic oath) ... and those who fought against the armies of repressive governments in their home countries."
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