The situation in Honduras has been at a bit of a standstill for the last couple of months. Or at least it was, until exiled President Manuel Zelaya somehow managed to sneak back into the country and dramatically appear holed up inside the Brazilian embassy on Monday:

"I'm here unarmed and ready to engage in dialogue," Zelaya said by telephone with Venezuela's Telesur television network. "I'm the president legitimately elected by the Honduran people."

Zelaya's surprise move, nearly three months after the military whisked him out of the country, threw Honduras into confusion and seemed certain to escalate an already tense standoff.

The de facto government of President Roberto Micheletti had promised to jail Zelaya if he returned and try him on 18 charges of corruption and violating the constitution.

Micheletti had no public response to Zelaya's return but imposed a curfew beginning late Monday afternoon aimed at getting Zelaya's supporters off the streets. It was supposed to end at 7 a.m. Tuesday.

The supporters, who'd been demonstrating daily for Zelaya's return, rushed to the gates outside the embassy as word spread. They treated Zelaya as a conquering hero — "Yes we can!" they shouted repeatedly — and created a human shield to keep away the police and armed forces.

Jose Miguel Insulza, the secretary general of the Organization of American States in Washington, called on Micheletti's government to ensure Zelaya's security within the Brazilian Embassy.

That shouldn't be necessary. International law prevents Honduran forces from trying to arrest Zelaya at a foreign embassy. The grounds are considered Brazilian territory.

The demonstrators weren't there for long, as riot police swept in the next day and sent them packing. Honduran authorities initially cut off power to the embassy but have since restored it, and widespread civil disorder has permeated the capital in the wake of Zelaya's return. No one seems to know exactly how Zelaya got back into the country; he claims to have been aided by Honduran citizens, though of course he's refusing to name anyone specifically. His return has certainly amped up the tension between Zelaya, his supporters, and the government of Roberto Micheletti, who took Zelaya's place. Micheletti says that Zelaya will not be removed from the embassy (an act forbidden by international law regardless) and Zelaya says he isn't going anywhere. I would say this greatly increases pressure to adopt a plan supported by other South American nations and the U.S. to permit Zelaya to serve out his term, but I can also imagine that Micheletti's government is considerably disinclined to be provoked into accepting such a plan by Zelaya.

In aside, the political tension may necessitate the moving of the World Cup qualifying match scheduled to take place between the U.S. and Honduras in San Pedro Sula on Oct. 10th. This would be a most unfortunate and unfair result for the Honduran national team, who are undefeated in San Pedro Sula and who would really like to get a win and so avoid a playoff against any of the powerful South American clubs that may be chomping at the bit to roll over a CONCACAF club to secure the last South/North American berth in the World Cup.

As Zelaya continues to flirt with the prospect of returning to Honduras to reclaim the presidency, the United States State Department revokes the visas of certain coup leaders. Roberto Micheletti, who replaced Zelaya as President, appears open to the return of Zelaya from exile (though he mentions prosecution, it's clear from his op-ed that the coup plotters would agree to some other arrangement.) And Kevin Coleman at History News Network has another good column on how the protests represent a flourishing of democracy in Honduras.

Via Ken Silverstein, this fascinating portrait of a once-wealthy American backer of deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, and how Zelaya has been at best an imperfect tool for Andersson's hope for democratic and economic reform in Honduras. Silverstein concludes:

As I said before, Zelaya was no radical. His crime, in the eyes of those who overthrew him, was not his allegedly anti-democratic tendencies — you have to be stupid to think the Honduran elite cares anything at all about democracy — but his approval of a big minimum wage increase, which was desperately needed in a country where so many workers are poor.

For what is purported to be a perfectly legal ouster, the new Honduran government is spending an awful lot of time shutting down press coverage that is critical of the coup, and courting anti-Zelaya media outlets.

UPDATE: At the History News Network, Kevin Coleman gives us some insight into who exactly is behind the coup:

The significance of this coup is that it is in fact a break from the pattern of past coups. In past Honduran coups, either one political party overthrew the other, preserving their traditional patron-client relations and taking the spoils of the state for those within their patronage network, or the military overthrew a civilian government so that it could stay in power itself, as happened multiple times during the 1960s and 70s. This, however, is the first coup by a united upper class. The Honduran business community united across party lines, deciding that it was worth severing the traditional patron-client relations that they enjoyed through their affiliation with one of the dominant parties so that they could stop Zelaya in his effort to increase the participation of common citizens in the affairs of their government while he also drew the country closer to Venezuela.

A class-based coup cannot be openly declared as such and must instead be articulated through existing political ideologies that allow the group seizing power to represent what they are actually doing as something other than what it is. So as the business, industrial, and news media of the country summoned the repressive power of the military to create the political conditions to rule by the traditional economic and political ideologies that have left the majority of Hondurans in dire poverty, they justified subverting the legal and democratic system as a defense of democracy.

Zelaya may have been corrupt, or at leats self-aggrandizing, but like many Leftist leaders in Latin America he was opposed to the system of power as it exists in his country and that, not this nonsense about defending democracy, is the real reason why he was deposed. A clue to this fact exists in the way our very own right-wingers have covered (or not covered) the situation in Honduras. Not only are their feathers ruffled by Zelaya's anti-Americanism and increasingly close ties to Hugo Sanchez, but being true conservatives, they are also opposed to the redistribution of power from the powerful to the less powerful. Not being an expert on Honduras my insight is worth less than even two cents, but it seems to me that those behind the coup (rightly or wrongly) feared that Zelaya might actually manage to somehow extend his stay in power, and they were determined to put a stop to that in whatever way necessary.

Daniel Larison seems to think that everyone from Obama, to the United Nations to the Organization of American States are disrespecting the collective will of Hondurans in demanding that ousted President Zelaya be returned to power. However, there are clearly Hondurans who disagree on the wisdom of launching a coup and exiling Zelaya to Costa Rica:

There are also several columns out defending the move, including this one by Octavio Sanchez. Again it is an argument over the legalities of oster and exile, but this part puzzled me:

The Supreme Court and the attorney general ordered Zelaya's arrest for disobeying several court orders compelling him to obey the Constitution. He was detained and taken to Costa Rica. Why? Congress needed time to convene and remove him from office. With him inside the country that would have been impossible.

Really? Why? Because he would have resisted his ouster politically, as a deposed head of state is likely to do? The one thing that troubles me more than anything is the fact that Zelaya was almost immediately put on a plane and sent to Costa Rica. You don't export leaders unless you fear that someone in your country might actually be upset that they were deposed. Doing so is a clear subversion of democracy, even if it's done after an otherwise legal arrest.

The rest of it is merely argument about the legality of his arrest and removal, and as I've stated before, the fact that you can argue about his ouster is a sign of the weakness of the coup plotters' arguments.

No one should be overly troubled that the Obama administration has indicated their disapproval of the coup. Every member of the OAG has condemned the coup, and they have done so because of an abiding fear of military coups, which have a long and sordid history in Latin America. Zelaya may have been unpopular, and many Hondurans may welcome his removal, but his removal and exile is a coup plain and simple, and is rightly condemned.

This by Professor Alan McPherson, recounts some of our dirty history in Latin America. I reiterate, it is simply impossible to ignore the hisorical context of the coup in Honduras, or those who are behind it.

By now you've probably heard news of the military coup in Honduras that ousted President Zelaya and replaced him with his Constitutional successor, Roberto Michelletti. Despite Zelaya's history of trouble-making and provocative acts which directly led to his ouster, the coup has been condemned by every member of the Organization of American States, who today have given the new government an ultimatum; return Zelaya to power or face expulsion from the organization. The White House has walked a careful line, noting disapproval of the coup and expressing the desire that Zelaya be returned to power, and even going so far as to welcome Zelaya to D.C. for OAS talks (thought not going so far as to recall the U.S. ambassador to Honduras, as other nations have.) Zelaya, for his part, has vowed to return to Honduras and reclaim the Presidency, though he has been warned that he will be arrested upon his return.

Anyone who is at all familiar with the history of Latin America is troubled by the implications of this coup. Though so far no one has died as a result of the coup, Latin American militaries have a long history of being at best the referees of what they decide is good governance, and at worst forces of horrendous oppression. Weighing on the coup without considering historical context is folly. But Daniel Larison makes exactly that mistake when he says this:

We are appropriately wary of people who invoke a political crisis to justify extraordinary and extra-legal measures. This sort of rhetoric can be so easily abused for the sake of augmenting and consolidating the power of those in government that we should normally be skeptical of such claims. That said, isn’t it the case that the response of Honduran political and military institutions to presidential illegalities is exactly the one that most of the Western world has been openly desiring in Iran?

Isn’t one of the main problems in Iran that the military and interior ministry colluded with Ahmadinejad in his crime? Suppose they had grabbed him on June 12, the day of the election, and thus prevented him from carrying out his fraudulent power-grab. Would we take seriously for a moment anyone gravely intoning about the need for proper procedure and rejecting the result as an illegal action against the democratically-elected president? (Obviously not, because very few, even the most ardent Mousavi cheerleaders, genuinely think of Iran as having anything like a real democratic process.) One way to look at the Honduran situation is that the political and military institutions removed Zelaya early on rather than permitting him to continue to abuse his office. They did what their counterparts in Iran could not or would not do. Indeed, one might go so far as to say that they were able to take such action because Honduras is a constitutional democracy in many important respects that Iran simply isn’t.

And in an earlier post, Larison accused the Obama administration of "incredible incompetence" in handling the crisis, a reaction prompted by the White House merely noting their disapproval of the coup.

It's difficult to unpack Larison's statement above. After all, how on Earth is the coup evidence of the strength of Honduras' democracy? But I think it's important to understand where Larison is coming from. So as he has spent the last couple of weeks defending the Obama administration from critics who have said that the administration is not doing enough to indicate their support for the Iranian dissidents, so too will he attack those calling for more robust action in Honduras. Larison isn't an isolationist, but he is something of a non-interventionist. As am I, but I think Larison turns the facts on their head in an effort to link his position on Iran with his position on Honduras. There really is little by way of comparison between the coup in Honduras, and what supporters in the West wish for the dissidents in Iran to do. While it's true that in both nations you have some portion of the populace attempting to overturn the natural political order to some extent, it's important to remember that they are coming from different directions. In Honduras, the actors behind the coup are almost certainly conservatives opposed to Zelaya's populist policies and rhetoric (though it should be noted that apparently much of the populace opposed Zelaya's blatant-if incompetent-power grabbing schemes.) They are subverting an established political order that exists to represent the will of a majority of people and is at least designed to enforce the rule of law, however fitfully. In Iran, it is the political order, fashioned by the regime presently in power, that exists to subvert the will of the populace, and the rule of law is essentially non-existent. But it is in one crucial respect that the plotters of the coup and the regime in Iran are the same; they represent those with the power in their nation, and they are determined to subvert popular will and democracy to retain it. If supporters of the Iranian dissidents would cheer the regime caving on the election of Moussavi, it would be because democracy has been affected as a result. If critics of the Honduran coup plotters lament the ouster of Zelaya, it is because democracy has been subverted as a result. In other words, it does matter who the actors are, and it is not possible to make a coherent argument that it is the dissidents in Iran and the conspirators in Honduras who are on the same footing.

Now I'm not entirely sure why Larison stakes out this position. Perhaps his non-interventionist instincts have gotten the better of him. But it is also important to remember that Larison is a true conservative, and in that respect uncomfortable with non-gradual political change or political disorder. So then to him-I speculate-a victory by Moussavi in Iran is good, but only so far as it doesn't topple the established political order and result in violence in the streets. And so too is an elected President in Latin America good, so long as that President doesn't himself attempt to subvert the political order by enacting popular Leftist policies or over-reaching for power for himself.

Either way though I agree with him on much of his foreign policy positions, I think it's certainly the case that he's wrong this time. For the sake of establishing a precedent that rejects the long history of military intervention in Latin America, the government in Honduras must return Zelaya to power. Anything short of that should be met by harsh criticism from the White House (a move which, by the way would immensely boost our credibility in the region) and condemnation from supporters of democracy both here and abroad.