What does the average American citizen know about Haiti, or any other country in which the U.S. government decides to intervene?
Not nearly enough, unless they feel the urge to navigate the meandering twists and rapids of U.S. foreign policy.
The brief facts, as I know it, read something like this. Aristide was ousted by a coup in 1991. Haiti was run by a violent junta, until U.S. military intervention put him back in the presidential palace in 1994.
The year is 2004 and it is evident that Mr. Aristide has lost favor with the West as the United States and other leading Western Nations called on him to do what was best for Haiti: leave.
In doing so he would surrender to the demands of his opposition who, while calling Mr. Aristide a terrorist, would not negotiate for any kind of peace settlement or power sharing agreement, unless Mr. Aristide left.
Never mind that from all reports, such a removal would be a blatant violation of Haiti’s constitution. Obviously, the West does not care to set a democratic example, so why intervene in the first place?
Think self-serving first and humanitarian later. I would hazard a guess and say that, if it were not for the 20,000 American citizens living in Haiti and the threat of the Florida coastline being flooded with Haitian boat people (refugees) in the middle of President Bush’s re-election campaign (an event that would definitely give the Democratic Party more ammunition), the response would not be this swift.
After all, one cannot ignore the fact that, after 200 years of independence, Haiti has yet to form a working democracy.
Much of the population languishes in illiteracy while the United Nations churns out data which says Haitians are the most malnourished people in the world, and yet no one before this point has dared to intervene.
After all, Haiti is a sovereign nation with a constitutionally elected president. It is hard to pick the true sentiment out of all the blather that comes out of Washington.
It has the been the eternal bane of Western powers to watch situations escalate out of control by ignoring whatever warning signs may be present. They didn’t believe Adolf Hitler was serious in his Mein Kampf ravings, and it wasn’t until after a good many Hutus and Tutsis had been slaughtered in Rwanda Burundi that they dared intervene.
In recent times, the Bush administration has put a near total embargo on foreign aid to the Haitian government and blocked loans from the Inter-American Development Bank for improvements in education, roads health care and water supplies. Seems to me like they’ve been trying to get rid of Aristide for a while at the expense of millions of Haitians.
So while rebels celebrate Aristide’s departure with American-issued weaponry, I wonder who will fill the obvious power vacuum, and when America’s citizens will demand reason’s why from its own “constitutionally-elected” president.
Haiti’s list of opposition leaders reads like a motley list of never-do-wells and if the U.S. and the rest adopt the same hands-off approach perfected by the old colonial powers, I don’t foresee any good fortune for the Haitian people.
The only thing Aristide’s removal reinforces in the mind of the ignorant masses is that the way to effect regime change is through intimidation and protest.
Elections and democratic procedure are rarely if ever politically expedient. Besides, if you kowtow to the U.S. line, you can never predict the kind of goodies that might come your way and the inhumanities you can get away with.
