19970: sajousp: U.S. greased Aristide's slide (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: sajousp@aol.com

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U.S. greased Aristide's slide
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Now it must help to rebuild Haiti

Clarence Page

March 7, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Here's how the Bush administration pulls off a regime change in the Caribbean:

"Let's play `Let's Make a Deal,' Mr. President: Behind Door No. 1 we have an all-expenses-paid trip for you and your family aboard a civilian jetliner to the country of your choice, as long as that country agrees to take you.

"Or you can choose Door No. 2, behind which are a couple hundred rebels just outside the city, ready to roll into the presidential palace with absolutely no resistance or discouragement from your own police, your armed political gangs or the United States.

"So, what's it going to be, Mr. President? Just sign this pre-written letter of resignation and the one-way all-expenses-paid trip can be yours. Or you can choose certain death. Take your time, sir, but the clock is ticking."

That's my version of what appears to have happened, based on available accounts, during Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's final hours in power.

Forget for a moment Aristide's wacky sounding allegations that he was "kidnapped" by American troops at gunpoint. Sticking purely to what we know, Aristide was lucky to get out of Haiti alive. But the U.S. also was too slow in addressing Haiti's long-gathering crisis and the Bush administration was too one-sided in greasing Aristide's slide from power.

Aristide's corruption of Haiti's police and other institutions backfired against him in the end, rendering his government too weak to stand up against a couple hundred rag-tag, but well-armed, rebels.

But since Haiti has no oil for the U.S. to worry about, it took the rising possibility of a Florida-bound refugee boat exodus to move U.S. diplomats. In February's last days, the U.S., along with Canada, France and Haiti's Caribbean neighbors, pushed for a compromise coalition government between Aristide and the rebels, pending new elections.

But when the opposition coalition, despite its espoused democratic principles, refused to bargain with Haiti's first freely elected president, the Bush administration caved.

"To me, [Aristide's departure] was engineered with very little respect for Haitians," said Michelle Montas, an independent Haitian broadcaster and former director of Radio Haiti International, who spoke with me by telephone from her home-in-exile in New York City. "The U.S. was determined to have regime change and they went on and did it. The result was a smaller scale of the fall of Baghdad. Instead of Aristide's departure ending violence, violence continued--looting, burning, people dying and the American troops standing on the side, as if restoring order did not seem to be their job."

And she's not an Aristide supporter. Her late husband, Jean Leopold Dominique, was Haiti's most popular broadcaster before he was gunned down in his radio station's parking lot in 2000. An early supporter of Aristide's political movement, he later became a biting critic of Aristide's corruption. After Michelle Montas' security guard was killed at Montas' home on Christmas Day, 2002, also unsolved, Montas closed the radio station and moved to New York.

"I always thought that Aristide was the problem but also part of the solution because he could, to some extent, limit the violence," she said. "Now, as soon as they found out in the streets that he was gone, the violence was released."

Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega insisted under a grilling by congressional Democrats on Capitol Hill last week that the U.S. did not assist the rebels. The U.S. did nothing to stop them either.

That's unfortunate because America has more at stake than Aristide's ego. Americans can ill-afford to have a chronically failed state so close to Florida. The Bush administration blocks Haitian boat people, but Haitian traffic in Latin American cocaine continues to get through. As a candidate, President Bush treated overseas nation-building like an abomination, but effective nation-building is what Haiti needs.

American troops can provide the breathing space for cooler, more honest heads to take control of Haiti. The Clinton administration turned its Haiti mission over to an inadequate UN task force after more than a year on the island. We spent $3.2 billion there, but mainly on our brief occupation, not on building the democratic institutions Haiti needs in the long haul.

The U.S. should not be so hasty to retreat this time. Now that we have shown the world how the U.S. can watch a Haitian democracy fall, we need to show how well we can help build a new one.

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E-mail: cptime@aol.com


Copyright (c) 2004, Chicago Tribune

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