Gonzalez: Hillary Clinton's policy was a Latin American crime story
Touting her plan to rebuild America’s infrastructure, Clinton said:
“Look, I’m excited about this stuff.
Hillary Clinton displayed a sweeping grasp of federal policy at the Daily News Editorial Board on Saturday.
“Look, I’m excited about this stuff. I’m kind of a wonky person.”
But I kept thinking of the big gap between Clinton’s words and actions that her own emails reveal — especially toward Latin America.
When my turn came for a question, I asked about her role as secretary of state during the 2009 military coup in Honduras — a country from which so many children and mothers have fled to the U.S. of late to escape massive political and gang violence.
Before the coup, Honduras was at least making progress. Its democratically elected president, Manuel Zelaya, had instituted free public education for all, decreed a reduction in sky-high bank interest, and sharply raised the minimum wage.
“Our assessment was, we will just make the situation worse by punishing the Honduran people if we declare a coup and we immediately have to stop all aid for the people,” Hillary Clinton said.
But in June 2009, the military seized Zelaya in the middle of night, deposed him and sent him into exile. The United Nations, the Organization of American States and President Obama immediately called for Zelaya’s restoration.
“There is no doubt that the military, Supreme Court and National Congress conspired on June 28 in what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup against the Executive Branch,” our own ambassador there, Hugo Llorens, wrote in a cable that WikiLeaks later uncovered.
Anne-Marie Slaughter, then Clinton’s director of policy planning, even sent her boss an email on Aug. 16 urging her to “take bold action” and to “find that (the) coup was a ‘military coup’ under U.S. law.”
Doing so would have forced an immediate cutoff of U.S. military aid.
“I got lots of signals last week that we are losing ground in Latin America every day the Honduras crisis continues,” Salughter wrote. “Even our friends are beginning to think we are not really committed to the norm of constitutional democracy.”
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