In Steve Van Zandt’s classic 1985 “We Are The World”-era group protest ditty “Sun City”, Eddie Ruffin, joining a group of other singers promising not to play South Africa’s “Sun City” entertainment complex and lamenting the Reagan Administration’s policy of “constructive engagement” (which either property recognized national sovereignty or was prima facie evidence that the US was a racist nation, depending on who you asked), plaintively asked “…someone tell me why are we always on the wrong side?”

I’m starting to know the feeling.

The term “military coup” has gotten a bad reputation in the United States.  Justifiably so; the US was founded at least party with a sense of institutionalized paranoia about the military usurping power from the democratically-elected government.  And most military coups in our lifetimes have been dismal, miserable things, the stuff of banana republics and tinpot dictators.

But some military coups have their values. The Turkish constitution provides for military coups to prevent theocratic takeovers of Islam’s first secular republic.   And two of history’s worst dictators – Hitler and Stalin – rightfully feared military coups against them; Stalin purged his officer corps so ruthlessly it nearly destroyed the Red Army as a fighting force on the eve of World War II; Hitler spent endless time, effort and occasional brutality to bring the aristocratic Prussian Junker officer class to heel, and still came within a whisker of being toppled (in the Von Stauffenberg plot dramatized in the Tom Cruise movie Valkyrie). In societies plagued by violent, ruthless homicidal left-wings, the miltiary is sometimes a beacon of sanity; Franco’s Spain was nobody’s paradise, but career soldier Franco’s goal in the ruthless liquidation of the left was to leave Spain ready for democracy.  He was a brutal man, but he, like a lot of soldiers, put his country first.
And, it would seem, if you believe in the rule of law rather than the rule of men (especially currently-fashionably-left-of-center men), the coup in Honduras would seem to be a candidate for “good”, or at least “lesser of two evils”, status.

Pam Geller at AmThink breaks down how very, very wrong the Obama Administration’s response in Honduras has been:

What just happened in Honduras? A military coup, destroying democratic rule? No. What just happened in Honduras was an example of how democracy works – and yet more confirmation that Barack Obama is not on the side of freedom, but of tyranny. The United Nations, the leftopaths in the mainstream media, and the radical U.S. President are trying to paint what happened in Honduras as a coup. It was not. It was a democracy at work, saving itself from a Hugo Chávez-backed takeover.
The real story behind the chaos in Honduras is a huge story that needs to be exposed to the world. And the bottom line is that Obama got it wrong, again.

You have to write real slow to explain some of this stuff to the “Government Uber Alles” lefty community in this country.  Fortunately, Geller breaks it down  well:

Take this hypothetical: imagine that Barack Obama announced that he was going to hold a referendum on legalizing a third term for himself. Imagine that even his attorney general, Eric Holder, advised him that it was illegal. Imagine that the Supreme Court ruled that holding the referendum was unconstitutional. In spite of that, let’s imagine that Obama coerced the FEC into holding the referendum anyway. Then – let’s further imagine — we found out that Venezuelan strongman Chávez (who has pulled off a similar power grab in his own country) was financing the referendum. What should the Joint Chiefs do in such a case? And if they removed Obama from office, would they be destroying the Constitution or preserving it?

This is exactly what has occurred in Honduras, to a tee. The Honduras Attorney General and their Supreme Court did exactly that – ruled that President Manuel Zelaya’s referendum was unconstitutional. The Honduran Generals did what they had to do. But then Chávez, Zelaya’s friend and ally, announced: “I have put the armed forces of Venezuela on alert.” And at that point Barack Obama spoke out – to side with Zelaya, Chávez and dictatorship. Obama said he was “deeply concerned” about what was happening in Honduras and called upon that nation to “respect democratic norms.”

What we have here, of course, is a clash of cultures.  Obama is defending “democratic norms”.  Chicago-style.

Obama is on the same side as Chávez, Ortega and the Castro brothers.

If you look carefully, I think you will find many of us were warning you about that before the election.

And the irony is thick. In a press conference on June 23, Obama said: “I’ve made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is not interfering with Iran’s affairs.” He never called upon the Iranian mullahs to “respect democratic norms.” On the contrary, he ostentatiously refuses to “meddle” in Iran, where individuals are courageously risking life and limb for the idea of free elections. Brutal Islamic nazis are crushing dissent, and Obama talks about “lively debate.” Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami spoke out Thursday against what he called a “velvet coup against the people and democracy.” Obama has sided with that coup, while in Honduras, Obama and the whores at the United Nations have no qualms about interfering to back a Chávez proxy. On Tuesday, U.N. General Assembly piled on, condemning the “coup” in Honduras and demanding that Zelaya be returned to office. It passed – by acclamation – a resolution calling upon all member states not to recognize the new government.

For all the left’s barbering about Bush’s alleged plans to abuse Democracy, Obama has done more damage in six months than Bush was accused of trying in eight years.