When Honduran leader Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo visits the White House today, it will be a watershed moment in the Central American country’s diplomatic rehabilitation. More than two years have passed since Honduran authorities removed Manuel Zelaya from the presidency to block his unconstitutional, autocratic power grab. Five months after Zelaya’s ouster, Honduras held a democratic national election, and Lobo, a member of the conservative National Party, won with over 56 percent of the vote. Yet it was not until this past June that Honduras was formally readmitted to the Organization of American States (OAS), which had suspended the country following its 2009 “military coup.”

Of course, despite what the OAS and the Obama administration said at the time, the removal of Zelaya was not a military coup, but rather a legally justified defense of democracy. Indeed, an August 2009 Law Library of Congress study concluded that “The judicial and legislative branches applied constitutional and statutory law in the case against President Zelaya in a manner that was judged by the Honduran authorities from both branches of the government to be in accordance with the Honduran legal system.” The OAS should never have expelled Honduras in the first place, and it should have reinstated the country much sooner. In June 2010, a full year before Honduras officially returned to the OAS, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noted that “President Lobo has done everything he said he would do. He was elected through a free and fair, legitimate election. He provided political amnesty. He set up a truth commission. He has been very committed to pursuing a policy of reintegration.”