Our Secretary of State gives a lengthy interview to the Washington Post‘s Glenn Kessler that includes some remarkable exchanges. The bizarre contradiction in this administration’s approach to authoritarian Iran on the one hand and democratic Honduras on the other is offered by Clinton without any evidence that she herself is aware of inexplicable double standard. Clinton says of the administration’s commitment to reaching out the Iranian regime, despite the crackdown after this summer’s rigged elections,
And then Kessler asks about Honduras, where the administration has refused to engage with the current government that came to power with the consent of the country’s highest court and its legislature in order to prevent a power grab by the former president:
Yes, Madam Secretary, people were surprised, since this was the only instance in eight months in which the Obama administration took a stand for democracy and constitutional order. And yet that stand is in direct conflict with the views of the Supreme Court in Honduras, which both authorized Zelaya’s detention and ruled that his attempt to change the country’s consititution to gain a third term was…unconstitutional. The lesson here: the Obama administration will deal with the people in power now — so long as those people are anti-American autocrats. And this administration will not deal with the people who seek to — or succeed in — overthrowing them.
