Obama Treats Allies Worse than Enemies

Historian Bernard Lewis has observed that a nation can make few mistakes worse than this: to be “harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend.” Is that a fair characterization of American foreign policy under the Obama administration?

Start with Honduras, which has been a stable and valuable American ally for two decades. Recently, Pres. Manuel Zelaya attempted to subvert his country’s laws and democratic institutions in pursuit of the kind power enjoyed by such left-wing and anti-American strongmen as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Cuba’s Raul Castro, and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega.

Honduras’s Supreme Court stood up to Zelaya — eventually ordering the military to remove him from office. Honduras’s Congress voted to install a new president, Roberto Micheletti, the next in line under Honduras’s constitution, and a member of the same Liberal party to which Zelayla belongs.