Mr. Obama, You Do Have a Button to Reverse the Coup in Honduras

The good news is that Latin American criticism of the Obama
administration's failure to pressure the coup regime in Honduras has
reached the level that Obama himself can no longer ignore it. The bad
news is that Obama's response so far seems to be to stay the course:
talk left, act right.

Reuters reports:

President Barack Obama said on Friday that he has no quick
way to resolve the political crisis in Honduras, where supporters of a
coup are refusing to let ousted President Manuel Zelaya return to
power.
...
"I can't press a button and suddenly reinstate Mr. Zelaya," Obama
said.

Actually, Mr. Obama, you do have a button. You're probably right that
it won't "suddenly" reinstate Mr. Zelaya. What's much more likely is
that pressing your button would make the coup regime much more likely
to accept the compromise proposal put forward by the Costa Ricans to
allow President Zelaya's reinstatement. Since your Administration
sponsored the Costa Rican process, it seems natural that you would do
something to make it work. Why not press your button and see what it
does?

Sixteen Democratic Members of Congress - Representatives Raul
Grijalva, Jim McGovern, John Conyers, Jose Serrano, Chaka Fattah, Mike
Honda, Barbara Lee, Jesse Jackson, Jim Oberstar, Dennis Kucinich, Bill
Delahunt, Jan Schakowsky, Donna Christensen, Sheila Jackson Lee, Sam
Farr, and Linda Sanchez - have
urged you to freeze U.S. assets and suspend U.S. visas of coup leaders
in Honduras. Why haven't you already done so, or even threatened
to consider it?

Would it be a meaningful sanction to revoke the U.S. visas of coup
leaders? There is considerable evidence that it would be. The last
significant sign of apparent movement from coup leaders towards
compromise followed one day after your administration took a similar
action. The New York Times reported
on July 29:

The head of Honduras's de facto government, Roberto
Micheletti, has expressed support for a compromise that would allow
the ousted president of his country to return to power, according to
officials in the de facto government and diplomats from the
region.

...

The call from Mr. Micheletti came one day after the United
States increased pressure on the de facto Honduran government by
withdrawing diplomatic visas from four high-level officials, and as
members of the Honduran Congress began their own examination of Mr.
Arias's proposal.

But this signal led nowhere, likely because your State Department
undercut the impact of its sanction by downplaying it and indicating
that there would be no follow-up. The four coup leaders can still
travel to the U.S. - just not on diplomatic visas.

Your State Department clearly believes that visa bans can be a
meaningful sanction. On August 6, the Washington Post reported:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton began a major
trip to Africa on Wednesday by publicly urging Kenya, a strategic U.S.
ally, to move faster to resolve tensions lingering from a disputed
2007 election that precipitated the country's worst crisis since it
gained independence.

Clinton went further in a meeting with Kenyan leaders, urging them to
fire the attorney general and the police chief, who have been accused
of ignoring dozens of killings carried out by police death squads,
according to a senior U.S. official who spoke on the condition of
anonymity because the meeting was private. Clinton also raised the
possibility of banning some Kenyan officials from traveling to the
United States if the government does not move more quickly to
prosecute those responsible for post-election ethnic violence that
left 1,300 people dead. The organizers are widely suspected to include
senior officials and cabinet ministers, many of whom have family
members in the United States.

"We are going to use whatever tools we need to use to ensure that
there is justice," the official said. "We raised the possibility of
visa bans and implied there could be more."

So, in Kenya, your State Department is willing to use the threat of
visa bans to pressure the government to "move more quickly to
prosecute those responsible for post-election ethnic violence" in
2007. Someone in the U.S. government clearly cares about this.

But your State Department is as yet unwilling, apparently, to use the
threat of visa bans to pressure the coup regime in Honduras to accept
the compromise proposal for President Zelaya's reinstatement put
forward by the Costa Ricans - the process your Administration
sponsored, to bring about the goal, President Zelaya's reinstatement,
that you say you support.

Why is that?