The Cowardly Lions

Last Wednesday at a meeting with Chilean President, Bachelet, told a poignant little joke. He said that the reason there had never been a Coup d'Etat in the United States was bracuse it had no US Embassy.
This joke, as poignant as it was to President Bachelet, who had personally been imprisoned as a teen during the CIA supported coup against Chilean Socialist President Allende in the early 70's and had seen her family imprisoned and persecuted during the Pinochet military dictatorship, was even more pointed in the wake of the right wing military coup in Honduras on the 28th of June.
The Honduras Military is a farm team for the Pentagon. It is trained and equipped and advised from the top to the bottom by the American Military. In recent times, Washington has organized and directed them in death squads to keep the Central American leftists in their place.
Last week, I began to think that events were in motion when I heard the reports on the BBC that President Manuel Zeleya was incurring the wrath of the military in his attempt to hold a referendum vote to change the Honduran Constitution regarding the one term presidential limit.
The Obama admisitration has condemned the coup and states that Zeleya iss the only person it recognizes as president. The Coup is said to be headed by former presidential candidate, Hector Rene Forseca, an extreme right politician with extensive ties to the religious right in the US.
Of course, when the generals staged their coup, they conveniently managed to have some of the major left wing figures in the governmend disappear. They also killed a major left wing party leader in cold blood.
They arrested and detained foreign journalists as well as the diplomats of countrries such as Venezuela who supported Zeleya.
The Coup has been condemmed by most of the Latin American Countries. The response from the Honduran Junta?
Pure beligerance. A statement that any attempt to interfere with Honduran affairs is an act of War and they are prepared to act on it immediately.
This kind of rhetoric is uncomfortably reminecent of the tone of the Iranian miltary junta in their attempt to stifle dissent and turn the blame on their power grab and use of force on "outside influences".
This is the kind of rhetoric that North Korea uses. A display of aggression meant to stun and curtail the outside world from interfering.
This is the tool of dictators. Bluster and aggressive rhetoric which is used to create controversy and aggressive response which is used in the endless cycle of paranoiac repression and violence on the population of their contries to curtail protest.
This is exactly why Barack Obama has been so wise in his measured response in each of these situations. To have threatened and blustered his way through a beligerrant statement to the Iranian Military, would have only given them more ammunition to crush the protests.
To use rheoric as a tool to deal with the North Koreans would only be putting on a cheap show for the cowardly lions who want to bluster back.
We are in a position to break the cycle of bluster. It is one thing for a cowardly lion to roar and threaten, but to have the intelligence to use an opponents aggression as tool against him, is the art of real diplomacy.