There’s been a great debate over whether what happened in Egypt constitutes a “coup.” The reason for the debate is clear: If it was in fact a “coup,” then the U.S. must stop providing aid to that country — because that’s what U.S. law requires.
One interesting thing to keep in mind is that when the Honduras leader was overthrown a couple years ago, President Obama was quick to call it just that — a “coup.”
In 2009, at a joint press conference with the President Colombia, in the Oval Office, President Obama had this to say about what had happened in Honduras:
“Well, let me first of all speak about the coup in Honduras, because this was a topic of conversation between myself and President Uribe. All of us have great concerns about what’s taken place there. President Zelaya was democratically elected. He had not yet completed his term. We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the President of Honduras, the democratically elected President there. In that we have joined all the countries in the region, including Colombia and the Organization of American States. I think it’s — it would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backwards into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition rather than democratic elections.”
But when it comes to Egypt, he’s still not sure.
