This is one of the most soppy oatmeal posts I've ever read. For one thing, the fact that Andrew Leonard went to Thailand several times some 20 or more years ago (a favorite Leonard mantra), seems pretty irrevelant. There are no insights derived from that experience that could not have been gleaned from reading news posts from far away.

The other point seems to be that no matter how much the government may suck, a democratically elected despot is always better than removing him by coup.

The bottom line is that no one can really say whether this is good or bad until we see how it plays out. It the military in fact allows democratic elections in the near future then this might be a positive move.

The post cites massive demonstrations in 1991-92 that brought down the last military government as a good thing. Yet it fails to note that there were massive anti-Thaksin demonstrations earlier this year. It wasn't just something that the military didn't like. Thaksin has been accused of numerous shady capitalist government moves that resulted in personal enrichment. That included changing the law so that he wouldn't have to pay taxes on the sale of his business empire. He called for new elections last winter and manipulated the process to favor himself. He resigned from his position as prime minister then reclaimed the position a couple of months later when the elections didn't create a clear cut winner. In negotiations to have a new election he was playing every card he could to tilt the playing field in his own direction. Not surprising moves but certainly undemocratic.

I'm not sure that democracy was working in Thailand. There were suits going through the Thai legal system asserting that Thaksin had circumvented the constitution in approving free trade agreements with Australia and Japan without getting them cleared through the senate -- unconstitutional. The anti-free trade agreement fervor was a large part of the anti-Thaksin movement.

So what do you do when the chief executive is stomping all over the constitution?

I say that in the United States you impeach the sucker. But there are other processes in other countries that may be more expedient for their situation.

At the very least don't pontificate until you see which direction this is heading.

who is Thai. She was born in Thailand, raised in America, and still lives in America but most of her family outside of her immediate family lives in Thailand and she visits regularly. I was talking to her about yesterday's events and asking what she had heard from her parents. This is a direct quote of what her mom had to say:

"They’re just changing the Prime Ministers. It doesn’t affect us."

This woman is in her 60s. Both her and her husband have many family members in the military and they are at least as politically aware as your average military family in the US. So here's my question: Is this exactly a bad thing? Could this not just be a case of a cultural difference in governing? No shots were fired. Nobody's dead. The military seems to be handling the situation quite gently and, dare I say it, fairly. I'm no expert in Thai history or politics but I do tire of our propensity to see a few AP pictures of a guy in a tank and to rush to judgement about how awful the situation must be. If this has happened 18 times in the past 74 years that's one coup every 4 years on average. That's the length of a US presidential term.

So in all seriousness, how is this (1) not business as usual, (2) not justified given the history of the current (now former) PM and the political history of Thailand, and (3) a bad thing?

Those questions may have answers but I'm not well versed enough in Thai culture to provide insight. Any takers?

There is a muslim aspect to this that shouldn't be overlooked. The muslim generals replaced buddhist leadership and it's unlikely they'll simply give it up. I think we can expect some kind of dramatic realignment in Thailand soon.

So this is a good coup?

Seems to me that any coup no matter how popular, is a sign that the democratic system isn't working, and that's a step backwards for Thailand's political evolution. The King is 78. What happens when he dies? Does the next king command with the same gravitas? What happens when the next group of generals decide they don't like the current prime minister, and are emboldened to get rid of him by the last one?

I stand by my initial reaction: "it's a mess."

That's what we would say in thai.

The socio-political history and reality is that the military has always ruled Thailand. All the illicit (& even some perfectly legal) money-making ventures you can think of, they've got a cut off of it, in league with the police & whichever civilian leadership that's in office at any given time. The idea being that politicians are expected to come & go (on average an election every 2 years) , taking turn enriching themselves. The situation changed somewhat about 5 years ago with Taksin, who served a full 4-year term, first time in the country's history. In all, he won 2 landslide elections, the 2nd came right after the Tsunami last year, increasing his majority from ~330 to ~370 out of 500 seats. This is due to a combination of slick PR & actual good results, in the economy, administrative reform, near-free universal healthcare, the handling of Tsunami disaster & the controversial crackdown on drugs and underground gambling.

The trigger for this well-funded & hardly-spontaneous crisis in the past year is the direct consequences of this 2nd win His enemies realised that he's going to be around for a long while, and something must be done. Stupidly, he gave them an excuse with the offloading of his entire telecom conglomerate to a partly foreign ownership, which netted him a billion or so in cash.

The tax evasion issue is actually bogus, since this type of share trading has always (or for many years) been tax-free in Thailand. The dodgy part was the passing of the law that allowed him to sell them in the first place. But if he hadn't sold the shares, he'd still be condemned for conflict of interest, anyway. And the unrest would still have happened, regardless.

The snap election early this year was moot, because of the opposition's boycott, citing unfairness ...I think it's just that they knew they're going lose anyway, so decided to save money for when they could win, by drawing this mess out for as long as possible. And so here we are.

As for the king, he has spiritual and inspirational roles, and while deeply respected and revered for his integrity & 6 decades of works for the rural poor, he's no match for uniformed men with tanks. He's even talked about getting 'taps on the shoulder' when he tried to fully speak his mind, here we all know what that means.

The generals want to stay for a year or so, I suspect that the 19 millions (mostly rural) who voted for Taksin last year would have something to say about that. In the meantime, we may have to kiss good-bye to any number of much needed infrastructure mega projects (which depend on overseas financing) currently in planning, for the near future.

Either way, this is a right fucking mess, indeed.