This is not to say the coup was a necessary course of action, even from the standpoint of those who think Chavez must go. As Stephen Johnson of the Heritage Foundation points out, there were efforts already underway to remove Chavez from office through the devices of Venezuela's own constitution. It is possible to believe that his days were numbered without have to resort to extra-legal methods.
The coup went so badly that it's hard not to wonder whether Chavez didn't have a hand in it. He moves from a weakened position to a strengthened one. Let's be clear, however, in labeling this conspiracy theory as totally speculative. The enemies of the Bush administration won't be nearly so generous. Wednesday's New York Times, for instance, reports that Otto Reich urged Carmona not to dissolve the National Assembly, a claim the Times darkly interprets as "rais[ing] questions as to whether Mr. Reich or other officials were stage-managing the takeover by Mr. Carmona."
Except that Carmona apparently wasn't letting himself be stage-managed. But that doesn't matter. The Left now will make a determined effort to see the hand of Otto Reich behind it all - as if wishing would make it so.***
Cesar Gaviria, secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS), told reporters he saw no risk of a new coup like the one that swept Chavez out last Friday after a huge anti-government protest when 17 people died, but warned: "There is a risk ... social unrest will come again soon."
Indeed, opposition leaders, unconvinced that the feisty former paratrooper whom critics say wants to install a Cuban-style regime in the world's No. 4 oil exporter has any intention of changing his autocratic ways, promised as much. "As long as Chavez remains in power, we will continue the protests," Henry Ramos, president of Accion Democratica, one of Venezuela's main opposition parties, told Reuters. ***