You may not have noticed but Australia’s locked in the vice-like grip of a monstrous dictatorship.

Or at least, so one might conclude from the press coverage of Honduras, where the suggestion that Manuel Zelaya sought the abolition of presidential term limits has been widely taken as definitive proof of his dictatorial proclivities, just as the similar referendum in Venezuela proved Hugo Chavez a kind of Latin Stalin.

Never mind that the constitutional reforms Zelaya sought included a raft of other measures, such as an increase in the minimum wage, a reform of the labor code and the renationalisation of the telephone system and the power industry. Never mind that if the non-binding poll he sought had been passed, the resulting referendum would have accompanied the presidential election due in November, an election at which Zelaya would have been replaced. Never mind that, at most, his proposal would have allowed him to renominate for election at some stage in the future.

Had they come to fruition, the evil schemes of Zelaya (and, for that matter, Chavez) would have resulted in an electoral system rather like Australia’s, where there’s no automatic mechanism to prevent Kevin Rudd standing as often as he pleases. Perhaps Malcolm Turnbull should organise a coup.

But the po-faced denunciations of Dictator Zelaya are not the most fantastical elements in the coverage of the Honduran crisis. Much of the American press says more or less openly that his removal was a good thing — and then claims that the Honduran people agree. Thus the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the Christian Science Monitor have been caught quoting entirely fraudulent statistics to bolster their case.

The swooning enthusiasm of the American Right for a man in uniform has provided President Obama with a golden opportunity to bolster his liberal credentials, which he has suavely seized with both hands.

So, in most accounts of the Honduran crisis, Obama’s condemnation of the coup marks a watershed for US policy in the region. Except that, the closer you look, the less true it becomes.

Remember, the US is not a distant observer of matters Honduran, but a major player in the nation’s affairs. There’s a huge army base in the country, and the American military has deep and longstanding ties with its local counterparts, most of whom trained at the Pentagon’s School of the Americas. It’s inconceivable that Washington didn’t know that something was in the offing. We know that, prior to the coup US officials had been in Honduras, discussing the polarised situation with the military. According to the New York Times, they acknowledged “there was talk of how they might remove the president from office, how he could be arrested, on whose authority they could do that”.

No, that doesn’t mean that Washington wanted the coup. But the US clearly did want Zelaya out of the way. That’s why Obama’s initial reaction was so muted, an insipid call for “all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter”.

Even today, with the Presidential rhetoric much, much stronger, the US remains one of the few nations to retain its envoy in Honduras. And here’s another thing. Under American law, the ouster of a democratic government automatically triggers provisions to cut off military and economic aid. Does the Hunduran situation fall into that category?

Consider the statement by Colonel Herberth Bayardo Inestroza, the chief legal advisor to the Honduran army:

We know there was a crime there … In the moment that we took him out of the country, in the way that he was taken out, there is a crime. Because of the circumstances of the moment this crime occurred, there is going to be a justification and cause for acquittal that will protect us.

We fought the subversive movements here and we were the only country that did not have a fratricidal war like the others. It would be difficult for us, with our training, to have a relationship with a leftist government. That’s impossible. […] You should understand it’s very difficult for someone who has dedicated his whole life to a country and an institution to see, from one day to another, a person who is not normal come and want to change the way of life in the country without following the steps the law indicates.

In other words, Inestroza openly acknowledges that the army acted illegally but falls back on the “history will absolve us” defence – why, they were leftists, after all. It seems an open and shut case. But have Washington’s anti-coup laws kicked in? No, not so much. Indeed, Hillary Clinton, in particular, has made it clear that the US is quite willing to countenance a solution that doesn’t see the elected president restored. And, of course, the longer the interim regime remains in the saddle, the less chance of Zelaya serving out his term.

In these events, we can see the Obama doctrine taking shape. Where George Bush would have dubbed the coup leaders “men of peace” and invited them to cut brush at the presidential ranch, President Obama talks of the restoration of democracy. Yet, given that Zelaya’s been politically neutralised under Obama, just as he would have been under Bush, the rhetorical difference doesn’t amount to all that much.

As Deng Xiaoping (who knew something of these matters) famously said, whether a cat is black or white matters less than whether it catches mice. In Honduras, it increasingly seems that the mice are well and truly caught.