Haiti question

[Boris]

If the Bush Administration is so concerned about spreading the joys of democracy why didnt they send in the Marines before Aristide fled the country instead of after?

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

I don't claim to know much about the details of the Haitian situation, but it's telling that Aristide fled to one of the most repressive countries in the world.

[Boris]

Aristide had no choice. The US wouldn't accept him. The US took part in an active search to find a country that would take him. Apparently Aristide thought his plane was going to South Africa but instead he ended up in C.A.R.

The only reason Bush is sending any Marines at all to Haiti is to prevent a mass exodus of refugees to Florida during an election year.

It's sickening really to listen GWB and his supporters yammer on and on about how the US mission in the Middle East is to bring democracy and enlightenment to a brutalized people. It's obvious they are so full of crap. The only criticism of Aristide was that he failed to fulfill his campaing promises and was not a very effective president. The fact of the matter is that he was democratically elected. The people leading the current takeover are ex-military leaders from the Baby Doc-Ton Ton Macoute regime, a regime that rivaled Saddam and Pol Pot in terms of brutatility.

[ThaSaltCracka]

from what I hear, as soon as Aristede was elected he brutally went after his own people. He had some sort of "police" that went around beating and killing dissidents.
You really only need to look at the people of Haiti celebrating Aristedes departure to see how happy they are he is gone.
BTW, this is going to be a multinational effort to restore peace, with American Marines, French Soldiers, and other carribean countries soldiers.

[Dynasty]

[ QUOTE ]
from what I hear, as soon as Aristede was elected he brutally went after his own people...You really only need to look at the people of Haiti celebrating Aristedes departure to see how happy they are he is gone.

[/ QUOTE ]

Of course. Aristide was democratically elected but then he used his power to supress the democratic process. He wasn't quite a dictator yet but he was on his way. Wasn't the most recent election (sometime from 2000 to today) basically a farce without any opposition?

The administration was right not to send in troops for the purpose of propping up Aristide. He wasn't worth it and neither was his government.

[Boris]

"He wasn't quite a dictator yet but he was on his way. "

The gov't was under threat of a coup so of course he has the right to excersize dictatorial powers. The U.S. gov't would do the same thing if it were facing internal armed resistance. It's called martial law.

[ThaSaltCracka]

sometimes coup's are warranted. I think this has more to do with Aristedes failures as a "president" than anything else. He created the problem and then he wanted the the U.S. to hook him up AGAIN.

[Boris]

That's ridiculous to say that Aristide "created" the problem in Haiti. There is a very good editorial in the WSJ today that gives a brief overview of Haitian history. Basically the French made themselves incredibally wealthy by using Haiti as a giant plantation powered by african slaves. The slaves revolted, kicked out the french and took by force all of the land and assets from the ruling class. France and the US then imposed a trade embargo against Haiti which did not end until Haiti agreed to make a series of payments to French nationals totalling 10x the annual GDP of the country. These payments crippled the economy. All of this happened a long time ago. The slave uprising was completed 1804 and the last payment to France was in 1922.

More recently, Haiti was ruled by the brutal Duvalier father-son combo. They had a secret police force called the Tonton Macoute that terrorized the citezenry into submission. The leader of the current coup is a former associate of the Duvaliers and the Tonton macoute. I don't know how you can say that a return the Duvalier era is better than the mismanagement of Aristide.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

The gov't was under threat of a coup so of course he has the right to excersize dictatorial powers.

Oh, please spare us this crap. Next you'll be telling us that Chavez had the right to change the Venezuelan constitution just because he was democratically elected.

[ThaSaltCracka]

they may not be better off right now, but in the long run they are better off Aristede is gone.

[Boris]

So you're saying a demcratically elected gov't facing an armed rebellion does not have the right to impose martial law?

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

Regardless of *how* a government is elected, once it becomes despotic, armed rebellion may be the only recourse.

[adios]

Boris you're right methinks. The Bush administration doesn't see any strategic value in Haiti so they don't care very much. The Bush administration seems to care only to the extent that they just don't want a lot of Haitian boat people washing up on US shores. They will come here eventually though if a Duvalier protege seizes control IMO. Deal with the problems now or later. Looks like later to me is the choice being made. It always seems to be worse when the later course is taken.

[nicky g]

Hi Boris,
Here's another article basically supporting your view. I don't know much about Aristide or Haiti so I don't yet know what to think. I do think it unlikely that his dictatorial tendenies could have been too extreme given that he disbanded the entire army years ago.



Why they had to crush Aristide

Haiti's elected leader was regarded as a threat by France and the US

Peter Hallward
Tuesday March 2, 2004
The Guardian

Jean-Bertrand Aristide was re-elected president of Haiti in November 2000 with more than 90% of the vote. He was elected by people who approved his courageous dissolution, in 1995, of the armed forces that had long terrorised Haiti and had overthrown his first administration. He was elected by people who supported his tentative efforts, made with virtually no resources or revenue, to invest in education and health. He was elected by people who shared his determination, in the face of crippling US opposition, to improve the conditions of the most poorly paid workers in the western hemisphere.
Aristide was forced from office on Sunday by people who have little in common except their opposition to his progressive policies and their refusal of the democratic process. With the enthusiastic backing of Haiti's former colonial master, a leader elected with overwhelming popular support has been driven from office by a loose association of convicted human rights abusers, seditious former army officers and pro-American business leaders.

It's obvious that Aristide's expulsion offered Jacques Chirac a long-awaited chance to restore relations with an American administration he dared to oppose over the attack on Iraq. It's even more obvious that the characterisation of Aristide as yet another crazed idealist corrupted by absolute power sits perfectly with the political vision championed by George Bush, and that the Haitian leader's downfall should open the door to a yet more ruthless exploitation of Latin American labour.

If you've been reading the mainstream press over the past few weeks, you'll know that this peculiar version of events has been carefully prepared by repeated accusations that Aristide rigged fraudulent elections in 2000; unleashed violent militias against his political opponents; and brought Haiti's economy to the point of collapse and its people to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe.

But look a little harder at those elections. An exhaustive and convincing report by the International Coalition of Independent Observers concluded that "fair and peaceful elections were held" in 2000, and by the standard of the presidential elections held in the US that same year they were positively exemplary.

Why then were they characterised as "flawed" by the Organisation of American States (OAS)? It was because, after Aristide's Lavalas party had won 16 out of 17 senate seats, the OAS contested the methodology used to calculate the voting percentages. Curiously, neither the US nor the OAS judged this methodology problematic in the run-up to the elections.

However, in the wake of the Lavalas victories, it was suddenly important enough to justify driving the country towards economic collapse. Bill Clinton invoked the OAS accusation to justify the crippling economic embargo against Haiti that persists to this day, and which effectively blocks the payment of about $500m in international aid.

But what about the gangs of Aristide supporters running riot in Port-au-Prince? No doubt Aristide bears some responsibility for the dozen reported deaths over the last 48 hours. But given that his supporters have no army to protect them, and given that the police force serving the entire country is just a tenth of the force that patrols New York city, it's worth remembering that this figure is a small fraction of the number killed by the rebels in recent weeks.

One of the reasons why Aristide has been consistently vilified in the press is that the Reuters and AP wire services, on which most coverage depends, rely on local media, which are all owned by Aristide's opponents. Another, more important, reason for the vilification is that Aristide never learned to pander unreservedly to foreign commercial interests. He reluctantly accepted a series of severe IMF structural adjustment plans, to the dismay of the working poor, but he refused to acquiesce in the indiscriminate privatisation of state resources, and stuck to his guns over wages, education and health.

What happened in Haiti is not that a leader who was once reasonable went mad with power; the truth is that a broadly consistent Aristide was never quite prepared to abandon all his principles.

Worst of all, he remained indelibly associated with what's left of a genuine popular movement for political and economic empowerment. For this reason alone, it was essential that he not only be forced from office but utterly discredited in the eyes of his people and the world. As Noam Chomsky has said, the "threat of a good example" solicits measures of retaliation that bear no relation to the strategic or economic importance of the country in question. This is why the leaders of the world have joined together to crush a democracy in the name of democracy.

· Peter Hallward teaches French at King's College London and is the author of Absolutely Postcolonial
Aristide article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1159809,00.html)

[ThaSaltCracka]

I must confess I don't know much about Haiti either, other than what I have heard the past week or so. However the article was interesting, although I will take for its face value, which is the article was simply the authors opinion. I find it to be somewhat ridiculous.

It's obvious that Aristide's expulsion offered Jacques Chirac a long-awaited chance to restore relations with an American administration he dared to oppose over the attack on Iraq.
This line right here is especially funny, I don't quite understand how the author comes to this conclusion.

[adios]

Anybody surprised by this? Bush is probably praying that Haitians don't start coming in droves to Florida before the election. Seriously.

Duvalier Says He Wants to Return to Haiti (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040302/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/duvalier_haiti_1)

Duvalier Says He Wants to Return to Haiti
Tue Mar 2,12:28 PM ET


MIAMI - Exiled Haitian dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier told a television reporter he wants to return to his homeland now that President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has fled.


AP Photo



"This is my country," Duvalier told WFOR-CBS4 on Monday in an interview in Paris. "I'm ready to put myself at the disposal of the Haitian people."


But Duvalier said he doesn't plan to run for president.


"That is not on my agenda," Duvalier said through a translator.


The deposed dictator said he requested a diplomatic passport several weeks ago and is in constant contact with people in Haiti.


"I think I'm getting close and that I will soon have the opportunity to go back to my country," he said.


Duvalier also said was not involved with the rebels who helped force Aristide out of office Sunday.


He applauded the "prompt action of the international community," welcomed the presence of U.S. Marines and said the country should stabilize quickly.


Duvalier had been named president for life at age 18 following the death in 1971 of his father, Francois, "Papa Doc" Duvalier. Tens of thousands were killed during the 29-year Duvalier dynasty and hundreds of millions of dollars stolen.


Accused of human rights violations and stealing at least $120 million from the national treasury, Duvalier fled to France in 1986.

[Boris]

I read an article in Harper's a few months ago about Baby Doc. By that account he is living an impotent existence in Paris. He squandered most of his money on the high life and gambling. His ex-wife took the rest. He is now couch surfing and free loading off of old friends. I'm sure these recent developments in Haiti offer Baby Doc a slim ray of hope but I doubt he will ever return to Haiti.

[nicky g]

On a side note has anyone else read The Comedians by Graham Greene? It's set during Papa Doc's rule. I haven't read it since I was a teenager but I remember it as one of my favourite books.

[jokerswild]

He did send about 200 before Aristide left. Aristide claims that he got the old Godfather offer that he couldn't refuse: either his signature or his brains would be on the the resignation letter.