Follow me through the timeline:
4/18/09: His Majesty visits the Caribbean for the Summit of the Americas and is pictured (as above) glad-handing and yucking it up with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.
6/28/09: The Honduran Supreme Court has the military kick Chavez-backed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya out of the country and a provisional president was sworn in. Zelaya was given the boot because of Chavez-like (and inspired) violations of the Honduran constitution.
6/29/09: The very next day, His Majesty calls for the return of Zelaya to power.
7/9/09: With Zelaya still out of power, Chavez makes a personal phone call to His Majesty's state department in order to ask for further help in restoring Zelaya to power.
Thereafter, the U.S. continues exerting "enormous pressure" for Zelaya's return, culminating with today's statements from His Majesty's state department threatening cuts in economic aid to Honduras if Zelaya is not returned to power (the state department phrases it in terms of the provisional government reaching a "resolution" of the current crisis with Zelaya, but a return to power is the only "resolution" that Zelaya and Chavez would ever accept).
Now, if His Majesty is not truly Chavez's new agent (although you could have fooled me), then at the very least Majesty is doing his best impersonation of George W. Bush, who began this policy of appeasement towards Chavez during the Bush years. I'm not advocating that we go around sticking our noses or the CIA into the affairs of Venezuela and Honduras, or that some ill-conceived Neo-Con approach be followed in any way. But I do favor restraint in this situation (although the train's already left the station there), and I also know that the U.S. has no business doing the affirmative bidding of authoritarian dictators like Chavez or of apparent Chavez-clones and puppets like Zelaya. This is ugly stuff, folks.
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