While we are debating Honduras, what's its President up to?

While we are debating the security situation in Honduras, what is President Juan Orlando Hernandez up to? Dana Frank says a whole lot of no good in Just Like Old Times in Central America for Foreign Policy.

If the vicious, anti-democratic record of Hernández’s regime is so clearly documented, then why is the Obama administration celebrating the regime and looking the other way at its militarization and human rights abuses? The White House, it appears, is aggressively locking in support for the current Honduran government in order to solidify and expand the U.S. military presence in Central America, while serving transnational corporate interests in the region.

After the 2009 military coup, the United States moved aggressively to stabilize and consolidate the post-coup regime, in order to ensure a regime loyal to the United States and to corporate interests, and to send a message to the democratically elected center-left and left governments that had come to power in Latin America in the previous 15 years that they could be next. U.S. police and military funding for Honduras increased in the years that followed, under the pretext of fighting drug traffickers — who have flourished in the post-coup free-for-all of criminality.

Ok, there's maybe a sentence or two in what I quoted that I agree with, but go read the post for yourself.

If the US got to choose, we wouldn't have to work with Perez Molina, Sanchez Ceren, or Hernandez. However, that's who the people of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras elected.

To a certain extent, I like the policy suggestions at the end of the op-ed.

The administration should immediately and publicly distance itself from Hernández and his regime. It should stop celebrating Hernández, demand the removal of the military from domestic policing, and cut all U.S. police and military funding. It should challenge IMF and IDB funding for Honduras, and re-examine the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR), which, as the AFL-CIO underscores, has been destructive to the Honduran economy.

More positively, the United States should vigorously support a U.N.-sponsored commission on impunity modeled on the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, and ensure that the commission remains free of Hernández’s influence. The Obama administration’s model for economic development should emphasize labor rights, promote a diverse industrial sector generating good, skilled, well-paying jobs, and support diverse, sustainable agriculture development that supports the land rights of campesinos and indigenous peoples. Above all, the United States should reframe its role in Honduras as one in defense of human rights and social justice, rather than against them.

I would probably argue that Frank's suggestions in paragraph one are very unlikely. The US is not going to cut all police and military funding. Right or wrong, the US generally sees such assistance, in all its imperfections, as serving US interests and as leverage to get the Honduran government to act in a way that we prefer.

I don't imagine that the US would have too many problems with the second paragraph. The US government would probably say that that is actually our current approach to dealing with Honduras. Well, maybe except for a Honduran CICIG which I have argued for in the past.