A Bad Week for the Monroe Doctrine

[Judi Lynn]

A Bad Week for the Monroe Doctrine
By Conn Hallinan, June 14, 2010

It is hard to find words that quite describe U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s performance at the June 7 meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Lima, Peru. Cluelessness certainly comes to mind, but leavened with a goodly dash of arrogance and historical amnesia.

Clinton leaned on the 35-member grouping “to move forward and welcome Honduras back into the inter-American community,” urged the OAS to step up the fight against drug trafficking, and scolded the organization for a “proliferation of priorities and mandates that dilute its efforts, drain its budget, and diminish its capacity.” She added that the OAS should “refocus” on such tasks as monitoring elections.

Where does one begin? Well, Honduras and elections for starters.

While Clinton characterized the election that followed the coup against Manuel Zelaya “free and fair,” it was boycotted by 51 percent of the population. The U.S. has been silent about the fact that the new president, Porfirio Lobo, has overseen a reign of terror that, since the June 28, 2009 coup, has seen the assassination of some 130 anti-government activists, including seven journalists. The murders bear a close resemblance to death squad assassinations carried out under military dictator Policarpo Paz Garcia in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Reporters Without Borders recently designated Honduras “the world’s deadliest country for the media.”

“We are living in a state of terror,” says human rights activist Dr. Juan Almendares, a former director of research projects at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. Almendares currently runs a free clinic in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital.

More:
http://www.fpif.org/blog/a_bad_week_for_the_monroe_doctrine?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FPIF+%28Foreign+Policy+In+Focus+%28All+News%29%29

[rabs]

1. Nice article Judi

Covers the points we talked about on this forum before and after the OAS meeting.

Tks.