The main reason I am reluctant to “blog Haiti” is my own vast ignorance of the particulars of the island’s history.
But one thing that does make me angry is the under-reporting of the impact of the American embargo. Since 2000, we have imposed a stranglehold on Haiti through an international aid embargo, a strategy designed by Jesse Helms in the final weeks of the Clinton Administration. Aristide has been a huge disappointment since his celebrated return to power in 1994, and like so many others before him, he slid down the slippery slope from populist champion to dictator.
In any case, I found this press release last week from the Council on Hemispheric Affairs to be very helpful. Entitled “Unfair and Indecent Diplomacy: Washington’s Vendetta against Haiti’s President Aristide”, the rhetoric is powerful (and at times, a bit over the top). I can’t disagree with this analysis, however:
The end game is now approaching with prospects being bleak for Aristide and even bleaker for Haiti. The explanation for this disastrous outcome is not different to divine. Rather than see Aristide as a societal asset whose cause needed to be counseled as well as aided, Washington looked at the Haitian leader as a dangerous radical whose rule required it to be contained and hobbled.
The denial of aid to Haiti, which has been based on a calculated exaggeration of the flawed elections in 2000, totally prevented Aristide from honoring his pledge to improve the population’s living standard. This set the stage for the rapid plummet of Aristide’s standing with the public and the increasing debasement of his presidency. This fatal disaffection together with the collapse of his police force and the disbanding of many street gangs loyal to him, allowed the return of the thugs from the era of military rule. As for U.S. policy, all along it has been characterized by malign neglect and, at best, exhibits only bare tolerance for the Haitian leader. As a result of a strategy of too little and too late, the White House has left Haiti to the wolves, with little prospect that the benighted country has a prayer of a chance to achieve stability or democracy, ostensibly Washington’s goals for the island.
Look, I ain’t nominating Aristide for a peace prize. But I am saddened that so many Haitians have needlessly suffered so much from what is so aptly described as our American “malign neglect”.
Aristide is an evil thug, nothing more. That’s all he is now, and that’s all he’s ever been in the past. For an example of what a sweetheart he was long before we began “malignly neglecting” him, take a gander at this 9/27/91 quote, in which he extolled the virtue of “necklacing” (putting a tire full of gas around someone’s neck and burning him to death).
Yeah, there’s someone we should have been treating like more “a societal asset whose cause needed to be counseled as well as aided.” Not. This kind of pro-tyrant rhetoric is precisely why I abandoned the left in the late 1980s and never looked back.
Oops, I goofed - here’s what the link was supposed to be:
http://www.tastymanatees.com/archives/000491.html