Reflections On The Honduras Coup Article

When I first read the article about the Obama administration complicity in the Honduras Coup, I asked myself, “why wasn’t this bigger news.” I had never heard of this until now. Of course, I was not politically aware around the time this came up, but I was still surprised I had never heard about this. Upon further reflection, I began to change my mind a little. The government always fails to admit things publicly that it knows to be true. And in this case, I don’t think I necessarily agree with the characterization that the Obama administration was complicit in the Honduras coup. 

I don’t see any evidence that the Obama administration actively supported the coup. Obviously, they knew it was wrong and unconstitutional and the article makes the case that they did nothing to push back against the coup. But they decided not to acknowledge it publicly in order to avoid international complications. I also think that Obama was fresh into his presidency and had a lot of other foreign policy issues that he was more focused on. I think a similar situation occurred in Egypt when the recent coup over there took place. The government sometimes naturally doesn’t hold itself to the highest moral standards on foreign policy simply because the world is so complex. But don’t get me wrong, the coup and the situation in Honduras was definitely very unfortunate. I just don’t know if I agree with the characterization of the article.

This conversation is interesting considering our recent class discussions about intelligence issues. I have very mixed feelings on the topic. But I have to say, based on what I know (which is indeed limited), I do not have the most favorable view of Wikileaks. Good journalism, in my opinion, is selectively going through sensitive documents and filtering out certain types of information. Wikileaks seems to have a habit of doing a bunch of data dumps of classified information. I don’t like that. 

I think the mainstream media’s criticisms of Wikileaks has been largely valid. Wikileaks is a problematic organization that needs to adjust its tactics. Its not just the public that can access leaked documents on Wikileaks, international adversaries can as well. This is why the public needs journalists to filter out some of the classified information that gets leaked to them. Journalists need to consider the ramifications of publishing classified information before doing so. In organizations like The New York Times and The Washington Post, journalists do just that. Wikileaks doesn’t seem to have a mechanism for that.