19121: radtimes: Avoid the Temptation to Meddle in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

Avoid the Temptation to Meddle in Haiti

http://www.antiwar.com/eland/?articleid=2028

February 24, 2004
by Ivan Eland

Haiti is once again aflame and pressure is building for the United States
to "do something." The temptation is to go in and fix our southern neighbor
once and for all. But the real problem is that the U.S. government, over
almost a century, has done too much—not too little—in Haiti.

During the 20th century, the United States repeatedly has been deeply
involved Haiti's affairs. For example, in 1915 and 1916, to keep the
Germans out and help fulfill his promise to teach Latin American countries
"to elect good men," Woodrow Wilson ordered the occupation of Haiti. The
United States governed Haiti for 19 years but was not a good teacher. A
nationalist protest against the U.S. occupation and a massacre of such
protestors by the U.S. Marines eventually led to a U.S. withdrawal in 1934
(some U.S. financial control remained until 1947). After the pull-out, a
series of corrupt and authoritarian presidents ruled the country. In 1957,
the even more oppressive Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier came into power and
used his secret police to terrorize the country until 1971, when he died.
His despotic son, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier ruled until 1986.

In 1994, a flood of poor Haitian refugees began arriving on U.S. shores in
makeshift boats. Then-President Clinton realized that this flow would not
be popular in Florida. Under the justification of restoring the ousted
democratically-elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide, he therefore assembled a
U.S. military force offshore that threatened to invade Haiti if the
dictatorial regime of Raoul Cedras did not leave power. That rhetoric was
hypocritical because the United States had previously undermined Haiti's
nascent democracy after the 1990 election and then restored Aristide in
1994 only after he agreed to adopt policies of the U.S.-backed candidate in
the 1990 elections, who had received only 14 percent of the vote.

Of course, the wealthy United States could have assimilated those refugees
without threatening a potential invasion of Haiti, but that was a
politically unacceptable solution. The threat worked and the Cedras regime
departed without the need for a U.S. attack. A great victory was declared
for human rights and democracy. Yet after U.S. forces eventually left
Haiti, however, that country remained corrupt, violent and one of the
poorest nations on earth. The 1994 episode was only the latest of many U.S.
military interventions in Haiti since the beginning of the last century,
but the country never seems to get any better.

Even though Aristide had originally been genuinely elected, he held an
unfair election in 2000 and uses armed gangs to repress the Haitian people.
Recently, in the wake of violent opposition to Aristide's repressive rule,
the Bush administration's policy has been muddled. First, the
administration made known its desire that Aristide should step down,
implicitly supporting an opposition supported by the dark forces from
Haiti's authoritarian past. Then the U.S. government reversed course and
decided that Aristide should finish out his term in office, which ends in
2006, but allow the opposition to be part of his cabinet. The opposition
has now declined that "invitation" and may be on its way to taking control
of the country.

The death toll in the violence has so far been fairly low, and refugee
flows to the United States have not yet occurred. Yet the two Democratic
senators from Florida, a key state in the 2004 election for both parties,
recently urged President Bush take rapid military action to stabilize Haiti
and prevent any flight of refugees. No matter what happens in Haiti, the
Democrats may gain political advantage. If the president does invade Haiti,
the Democrats suggested it first; if not and refugee flows begin, the
Florida Democrats can bludgeon the administration with the issue in the
fall election campaign.

So President Bush, likely to be in another close election this year to keep
his job, may perceive some incentive to take military action. Holding him
back, however, should be his bitter experience—and potential election-year
albatross—of occupying Iraq and likely Democratic criticism for
overstretching the U.S. military.

Lost in all this electioneering is that Haiti will probably not be better
off under the likely thuggish rule of the opposition than it has been under
the democratically-elected autocrat Aristide. Like an episode of the movie
"Ground Hog Day," the United States keeps making the same mistake over and
over again by meddling unsuccessfully in the affairs of a neighboring
nation. The U.S. efforts to teach Haitians to "elect good men (or women)"
at gunpoint are futile, and often counterproductive, because the Haitians
need to change their political culture themselves to have any lasting
effect. If, in the worst case, an all-out Haitian civil war ensues and
refugees begin to flow, the wealthy United States should simply take them
in and do what it can to avoid violating the sovereignty of a another
country and thus undermining its image as the "beacon of liberty".

.