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OPINION: THE AMERICAS
JULY
27, 2009, 5:25 P.M. ET
The White House’s Latin Connection
Is Greg Craig driving U.S. Latin America policy?
By
MARY ANASTASIA O’GRADY
Former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya returned to his country
on Friday, traveling by SUV from Nicaragua to a small border
town. It was his first time back in Honduras since he was
arrested and deported on June 28 for violating the constitution.
Mr. Zelaya appeared somewhat disappointed that his theatrical
re-entry did not provoke a shoot-out. A few hours later he
jumped back into Nicaragua where Sandinista President Daniel
Ortega has given him shelter.
If Mr. Zelaya keeps this up, the crisis could drag on. But
however the standoff is resolved, it is likely to be remembered
as a defining moment for U.S. Latin America policy under Barack
Obama.
Mr. Zelaya had means, motive and opportunity to destroy the
country’s democratic institutions and was moving to do so. If he
succeeded, he could have consolidated power in the manner of
Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and turned the country into a police
state. Mr. Obama’s insistence that Mr. Zelaya be restored to
power has strengthened the image of an arrogant and patronizing
Uncle Sam disconnected from the region’s reality.
Hondurans might be more amenable to an Obama democracy lecture
if the U.S. showed any interest in standing up to Mr. Chávez and
his antidemocratic allies or any grasp of the dangers they
present. Instead, since taking office in January the American
president has embraced the region’s bad actors only to be
subsequently embarrassed by revelations that his new “friends”
are actually enemies of liberty and peace.
Reuters
White House Counsel Gregory Craig.
The weirdness started with the April Summit of the Americas in
Trinidad, when Mr. Obama practically high-fived Mr. Chávez like
they were long lost soul mates. The administration’s spin was
that tension in the region was caused by George W. Bush. The
charming Mr. Obama would change all that, and from there U.S.
influence would rise again. Mr. Chávez didn’t get the memo. On
July 19, the Washington Post reported that a new Government
Accountability Office report finds “that corruption at high
levels of President Hugo Chavez’s government, and state aid to
Colombia’s drug-trafficking guerrillas, have made Venezuela a
major launching pad for cocaine bound for the United States and
Europe.” Now Mr. Chávez says he will overthrow the Honduran
government.
Mr. Obama called Ecuador’s Rafael Correa in early June to
“congratulate” him on his recent re-election, and according to a
White House spokesman, “express his desire to deepen our
bilateral relationship and to maintain an ongoing dialogue that
can ensure a productive relationship based on mutual respect.”
This made Mr. Obama look uninformed again since Mr. Correa’s
disrespect for U.S. interests is legendary.
On June 22, I reported in this column that Colombian military
intelligence had evidence the Correa government is a supporter
of the Colombian rebel group FARC. A furious Mr. Correa jumped
in front of television cameras to issue a threat to sue The Wall
Street Journal. “We are fed up with their lies,” he warned.
He couldn’t know that the Associated Press would release a video
days later of a rebel reading a letter from the FARC’s deceased
leader about “compromising” documents that talk of the FARC’s
financial support for Mr. Correa’s 2006 presidential campaign
and “agreements” with Correa envoys. Reporting on the news, the
Spanish daily El Pais wrote that “various emails from the
computers of [FARC honcho] Raúl Reyes tell about the delivery of
$100,000 to the Correa campaign team. What is new is that a
high-ranking leader of the guerrillas verbally acknowledges the
contribution.” Mr. Correa denies FARC connections and says it is
a “setup.” No word yet on whether he plans to sue all the other
newspapers that subsequently reported the story.
Having established that making nice with the region’s
troublemakers is a priority, Mr. Obama now wants Mr. Zelaya—who
was endorsed by the FARC last week—reinstated. If Honduras does
not comply, the U.S. is threatening to freeze assets and revoke
the visas of interim government officials.
Some Washington watchers figure this bizarre stance is due to
the fact that Mr. Obama is relying heavily on White House
Counsel Gregory Craig for advice on Latin America.
Mr. Craig was the lawyer for Fidel Castro—er, Juan Miguel
Gonzalez, the father of Elian Gonzalez—during Bill Clinton’s
2000 repatriation to Cuba of the seven-year-old. During the
presidential campaign when Mr. Craig was advising Mr. Obama, the
far-left Council on Hemispheric Affairs endorsed Mr. Craig as
“the right man to revive deeply flawed U.S.-Latin America
relations.” In other words, to pull policy left.
There is plenty of speculation that Mr. Obama is making policy
off of Mr. Craig’s “expertise.” It is not too much to believe.
Indeed, if all policy is now being run out of the White House,
as many observers contend, then the views of the White House
counsel may explain a lot.
Write to
O’Grady@wsj.com
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