19190: radtimes:The Human Rights Establishment Destroys Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

The Human Rights Establishment Destroys Haiti

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12335

By Michael Radu
FrontPageMagazine.com | February 25, 2004

Liberalism's two flagship newspapers, the Washington Post and the New York
Times, have recently voiced concerns with Haiti's left-wing ruler, Jean
Bertrand Aristide – on the editorial page, no less. How have we come to
this turn of events? After all, Aristide was put back in power by the U.S.
military under President Clinton's comically misnamed "Operation Restore
Freedom" in 1994. Aristide is a "progressive" former Catholic priest
expelled by his own conservative church, is black and would satisfy the PC
Left's portrait of what a Third World leader should be. And still, the very
same Aristide, whose 1990 election and 2000 re-election were applauded by
leftists everywhere, is now seen with increasing criticism even by the
Left's standard bearers. This change has come about because Haiti under the
collapsing Aristide regime threatens to raise doubts over the very core of
liberal orthodoxy on the Third World.

The basic problem is not Bill Clinton's intervention in Haiti (or Somalia,
or Bosnia), or Bush's present interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq; it is,
in fact, not a partisan problem at all but a cultural American/Western
issue: the failed policies of the leftist Human Rights Establishment (HRE)
toward the Third World.

Haiti is the perfect case study, but it is far from a unique case: Somalia,
the Solomon Islands, Afghanistan, Zaire (oops! The Democratic Republic of
Congo), Liberia, Sierra Leone, and a number of others are quite similar.
All are pseudo-states enclosing profoundly dysfunctional societies,
societies that are beyond repair from within, and too costly to repair from
afar. Simply put, this is about the "black holes" of the international
system, entire "states" where there is no civil society, no legitimate
institution, no rule of law, indeed no law at all – all there is, in most
cases, is a vote in the United Nations' General Assembly and a limitless
ability to absorb and demand Western aid. All of this is made possible by
the equally limitless and nonsensical demands and claims by Western
non-governmental organizations (NGOs), who take advantage of the taxpayers'
ignorance, gullibility, and innate sympathy for those Third World kids with
distended bellies on their TV screens.

A recent piece in the far-Left British newspaper The Guardian illustrated
the NGO dilemma well: "Aid agencies warn of Haiti crisis," [i] but…(as
usual) have no solution…"15 UK and international NGOs, including ActionAid
and Oxfam, have warned that the economy is collapsing, with a threat to
food supplies as transport breaks down exacerbated by a doubling in the
price of petrol."

The Guardian continued to paint Haiti's developing "situation of
ungovernability, of institutionalized violence and of insecurity." This is
worsening "the already precarious socio-economic conditions of the
population," in a country where about half the population - some 4 million
people - have "insecure access" to food and 65 percent live below the
absolute poverty line, the NGOs warned. But the agencies said the emergency
situation cannot be solved by a massive influx of food aid "without
reaching a resolution of the political situation which is the cause…
Moreover food aid has traditionally had adverse impacts on the systems and
structures of production of the country and can only put at risk the
process of sustainable development."

The NGOs have also warned against armed intervention. They said the gravity
of the situation in Haiti "must in no way serve as a pretext for the
international community to intervene once again, militarily, in the
country, particularly at the time when the Haitian people celebrate the
bicentenary of its independence dearly acquired through struggle and
self-denial." They added: "Any military intervention in the current crisis
would not be sustainable if the structural causes of the decaying Haitian
social situation were not addressed - notably a social structure which is
extremely unequal and polarized, [and] the increasing poverty and social
exclusion of the great majority of the population from the spheres of
power. We reaffirm that international solidarity with the Haitian people
must be characterized by the respect for national sovereignty and the right
to the people of self-determination."

Let us translate this into normal, human language: The NGOs say Haiti is a
humanitarian mess, the fault lies with Haitians and only they could solve
it. On the other hand, they also say that outsiders could not and should
not interfere militarily; the West must simply continue an endless supply
of aid to Haitians, but never interfere, especially militarily, because
Haitians have a sovereign right…to murder each other.

The NGOs affirm this right to slaughter is legitimate, "particularly at the
time when the Haitian people celebrate the bicentenary of its independence
dearly acquired through struggle and self-denial." Translation: Because
black slaves succeeded in establishing a dysfunctional Republic in the
Americas in 1804, the outside should "respect" it and do nothing about the
present collapse of a hopeless descendent of slaves and tyrannical leader
of Haiti – Jean Bertrand Aristide – nor the chaos his incompetence has wrought.

In other words, the only role for the West is to pay, subsidize and feed
Haitians as they slaughter one another. This is the perfect example of the
NGOs' "human rights" and "humanitarian" terminal hypocrisy.

The ultimate responsibility lies with Western academia, which upholds
multiculturalism, the notion that all cultures are equal -- except the
immoral Western one, of course. These noxious notions have become the de
facto ideology of the "human rights" and charitable NGOs throughout the
world – a combination that could only be called the global Human Rights
Establishment (HRE). Somalia is not a "state" and never should have been
treated like one. Haiti could not be repaired because the locals choose a
tyrant in (relatively) free elections supervised by Jimmy Carter and thus
is deemed by the world a "democracy." The Haitians voted for Aristide
because, then and now, he represented their "values" – just as they elected
Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier in the 1950s. Indeed, it should be remembered
that the only two Haitian presidents ever elected in competitive elections
in 200 years were…Papa Doc and Aristide.

Elections, even technically free ones, do not make a democracy any more
than a rooster creates the daylight. Values make a democracy, and when they
are absent, at least beyond the village or tribal level, elections become
just a pretext for Aristides, Talibans, and similar monstrosities. But
multiculturalists have told us – and generations of elite university alumni
have agreed – that "tribe" is itself a Western racist notion (tell that to
the Somalis!) and that political culture is an evil "Orientalist" fiction
when it comes to the Arab world – where large majorities still believe that
September 11th was the work of the Mossad and CIA.

(Is this attitude toward the Muslim world going to change? Probably so,
since multiculturalists now have to deal with a new threat: the presence of
those admired Islamist cultures in the midst of the West. It is one thing
to explain away Islamic arranged marriages, the general treatment of women,
or genital mutilation when it occurs in Saudi Arabia or Central Africa; it
is another when the ordinary Joe Six Pack or Pierre hears of it in his
neighborhood. Americans have forgotten Somalia – and even the "Black Hawk
Down" movie – but the Somali black hole is still there, awaiting another
scream for "humanitarian aid" from the HRE – hopefully one not accepted.)

In terms of Haiti, it is one thing for a Randall Robinson or Jesse Jackson
to scream "racism" when Bill Clinton had doubts about restoring Aristide
(as if his enemies were not also black), another for Americans to see that
just a murderous gangs – the "Pink Army" in St, Marc, the "Canibal Army" in
Gonaïves (now rebaptised as the Front for the Liberation of Haiti), the
"Red Army" elsewhere – represented Aristide's "popular support" and are now
turning against him.

Unless Haitians once again try to invade Florida – and bring their culture,
voodoo included, with them – Americans should let Haiti be…Haiti. We should
let them sort out their own affairs, rather than attempt to impose a failed
national "solution," as Bill Clinton did. We should not continue to
entertain the fiction that they are a stable "democracy," as our
guilt-ridden leftist academics and HRE functionaries do, and our aid should
remain as absent from Haiti as our "imperialist" armies. But at least the
academics get it half-right. For once, the NGOs have come up with a
recommendation that should be taken seriously. For once.
-----------------
[i]Tash Shifrin, "Aid agencies warn of Haiti crisis," The
Guardian,  February 17, 2004
-----------------
Michael Radu is Senior Fellow and Co - Chair, Center on Terrorism and
Counterterrorism, at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.

.