15896: Nadal: Former President Bill Clinton and Jean Bertrand Aristide (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

>From Olivier Nadal :o_nadal@bellsouth.net


The Wall Street Journal

April 9, 2003

Bill Clinton told an audience in Puerto Rico Saturday that "we ought to let
the United Nations decide the future" of Iraq.  The war, said the former
President, "is a good thing if it is done right."

Those remarks caught our attention, and not merely because they meddle in
President Bush's current negotiations with Britain and other nations.  Mr.
Clinton also happens to be on a Caribbean tour that included a stop in Haiti
yesterday.  And if ever there was a primer on how not to rebuild a liberated
nation, Bill Clinton and the U.N wrote it in Haiti.
Recall that, under a U.N. resolution, U.S. troops restored "democracy" to
Haiti during the Clinton years by removing military coup-leader Raoul
Cedras.  Jean Bertrand Aristide, who had been democratically elected, was
returned to power.  After six months of U.S. military presence, Mr. Clinton
declared the effort a "remarkable success" and turned the reconstruction
over to U.N. peace-keepers.

It's been downhill ever since.  The source of the problem is clearly Mr.
Aristide himself, who likes absolute power as much as the country's
legendary Duvalier dictators. Washington knew what Mr. Aristide is made of,
but the Haitian strongman used a combination of Haitian public funds,
leftist rhetoric and the race card to win support from Mr. Clinton.

The U.N. stood by and watched it all happen, notwithstanding its good
intentions.  When the Senate elections were stolen in May 2000 by Mr.
Aristide's Lavalas Party, even the optimists began throwing in the towel.
In January 2001 the U.N. closed its Haiti mission and full-blown anarchy
took over.  Violence against Mr. Aristide's political opponents is now
commonplace, judges and journalists are harassed and many have had to flee
the country.  We doubt the U.S. and its allies could do any worse in Iraq.




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