Micheletti has vowed not to back down, and he sent a team to Washington this week to lobby against economic sanctions by painting the coup backers as a bulwark against "dictatorship" and "communism."
Appealing to free trade supporters, Micheletti's team hopes to nudge the Obama administration away from its threat to impose sanctions on the impoverished country, where export-assembly factories are dominated by U.S. firms and investors.
I don't understand how our government can think Zelaya--with his backers Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega--are the good guys. But Honduras needs to put a lot of effort into educating the so-called Nuanced Americans who blindly and stubbornly insist that Micheletti is a coup leader.
If we don't support the interim government and their scheduled elections under their rule of law, we'll encourage coups under color of law as Chavez has carried out and as Ortega wishes to do:
Nicaraguan opposition lawmakers on Monday condemned a public appeal for constitutional changes by President Daniel Ortega as an attempt to extend term limits and eventually allow the leftist leader's re-election.We'll get what we encourage. What will it be? Democracy or anti-American thug rulers?
At a massive celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution on Sunday, the president and former guerrilla fighter proposed to allow recall elections and criticized presidential term limits for being stricter than other public offices.
"If we are going to be just and fair, let the right to re-election be for all and people with their vote can award or punish," Ortega told a crowd. "This is the principle that we have to defend."
Nicaraguan law bars presidents from consecutive terms in office or more than two terms in all. Ortega ended a first stint as president in 1990 and was elected again in 2006 to a five-year term.
You'd think this would be an easy choice for us to make. But we haven't made that correct choice yet, so what do I know?
