July 30, 2009 12:00 AM

Friends and Foes
Treating the former worse than the latter is not smart policy.

By Clifford D. May

The National Review

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. New elections, Micheletti said, should be held in November, as scheduled — or sooner, if that would ease tensions. As for the decision to expel Zelaya from the country, that must be understood, he explained, “in the context of genuine fear of Mr. Zelaya’s proven willingness to violate the law and engage in mob-led violence.” ↓ Keep reading this article ↓