Change of Tactics

From Daniel Larison:

After quite a few weeks of defending Obama against his more unreasonable detractors, it is refreshing to be able to criticize the administration for its incredible incompetence in responding to the “coup” in Honduras. What is so impressive about the bungling here is that it contradicts every argument the administration has made in support of restraint and caution when it comes to the Iranian protests. Obama didn’t want to insert the U.S. into an Iranian dispute. Iranians, he said, would decide their own future. Hondurans apparently are not accorded the same respect. Their sovereignty isn’t quite as important. Obama withheld judgment about the legality of what had happened in Iran. In Honduras, he just knows that what the military did was illegal, despite far stronger evidence that it was legal and a result of the proper functioning of their constitutional system. U.S. intervention in Honduras has been no less than it has been in Iran. Indeed, it has been far greater. At least six times in the 20th century beginning in 1907, U.S. forces were deployed in Honduras. For fear that the U.S. might be seen to be replicating the error of 1953, Obama has kept his distance from the Iranian dispute. As ever, Central American nations’ past resentments about frequent U.S. intervention count for little or nothing, and so Obama has dived right in.

Perhaps he will cite the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine?

What Larison is too polite to suggest is that the President probably sees low risk in taking a more active verbal role with Honduras whereas there are huge implications for anything said about Iran.  I absolutely hate the notion of running our foreign policy that way.