20083: radtimes: The ouster of democracy (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

The ouster of democracy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1164195,00.html

In Haiti, Washington confirmed a foreign policy that is driven by
self-interest and delivered through force

Gary Younge
Monday March 8, 2004
The Guardian

"All books about all revolutions begin with a chapter that describes the
decay of tottering authority or the misery and sufferings of people," wrote
Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski in his book, Shah of Shahs, about the
Iranian revolution. "They should begin with a psychological chapter, one
that shows how a harassed man breaks his terror and stops being afraid.
This unusual process demands illuminating."

The tottering, and now toppled authority of the former Haitian president,
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, has been well chronicled over the past month. The
story of the psychological effect his departure had on the Haitian people
has been less comprehensively observed. There is good reason for this.
Despite the overthrow of the president and the outpouring of rebel
supporters in the streets, the Haitian people are pretty much where they
have been for the past 200 years - in a desperately impoverished country
where political violence is sustained, if not encouraged, by foreign
intervention and crushes any hope of reconciliation, democracy and economic
prosperity.

In revolutions the people take centre stage and the leaders follow - the
popular will outpaces and overpowers the established institutions and
moulds something essentially new from the old. But over the past week the
Haitian people have been not actors but spectators in their own destiny,
watching one band of armed thugs, who supported a leader with diminishing
democratic legitimacy, replaced by another band of armed thugs, who support
a movement with none at all, with the help of foreign governments. The
death squad leaders, army officials and US marines are back. There are no
longer any democratic violations to criticise because there is no longer
any democracy. What happened was not a revolution but a coup. And no simple
domestic overthrow either. This was the kind of regime change that the
French and the US could sign up to.

The circumstances of Aristide's departure remain under dispute. Aristide
says a huge number of US and Haitian "agents" came to his house and forced
him on to a plane that eventually landed in the Central African Republic.
The US says Aristide was resigned to exile once it was understood that he
could no longer hold on to power, his life was in danger and bloodshed was
inevitable. What cannot be seriously contested is that Aristide did not go
voluntarily in any meaningful sense, and that the Bush administration was
the primary instrument in his removal. It is debatable, yet doubtful,
whether the Haitian rebels could have achieved his removal on their own.
Whoever the US came into protect, it was not the Haitian people. Even as
they were advising people to stay out of the country because it was not
safe they were sending Haitian boat people, fleeing the crisis, back home.

You do not have to be an apologist for Aristide or an anti-American
conspiracy theorist to grasp this. Just follow the quotes from the US
secretary of state, Colin Powell, over the past month and the policy shifts
are clear. On February 12, Powell told the Senate foreign relations
committee: "The policy of the administration is not regime change [this
will come as news to the Iraqis], President Aristide is the elected
president of Haiti."

On February 17, he said. "We cannot buy into a proposition that says the
elected president must be forced out of office by thugs and those who do
not respect law and are bringing terrible violence to the Haitian people."
By February 26, after a week of shopping around, he decided to buy into it
after all. "[Aristide] is the democratically elected president, but he has
had difficulties in his presidency, and I think ... whether or not he is
able to effectively continue as president is something that he will have to
examine." A day later he was selling it, arguing that Aristide, having "the
interests of the Haitian people at heart", should "examine the situation he
is in and make a careful examination of how best to serve the Haitian
people at this time".

Just 48 hours later, after the coup, he was asking the rest of the world to
wear it. He explained why the US had not been prepared to go into Haiti and
support "an individual who may have been elected democratically but was not
governing effectively or democratically". Were it not for the fact that
Aristide has at least won a couple of elections, Powell could have been
talking about President Bush.

Powell argued that Aristide, who had presented his resignation letter not
to his constitutional successor but to the US government, had done the
appropriate, wise and patriotic thing by resigning. The crucial factor that
turned the rebels from "thugs" to a government in waiting in Powell's
rhetoric was that they took over the second city, Cap Haitien. Once the US
sensed that the side they wanted to win could win, they simply switched sides.

The principal message to the Haitian people from Aristide's ouster is that
force works. If you do not like the elected leader of the country, start a
rebellion and refuse to negotiate. If it is strong enough, and its politics
amenable enough, the Americans will come and finish the job for you. With
33 coups in 200 years, this was a message the Haitian people did not need.

Two key lessons emerge from this, which go beyond Haiti. The first is that
military force is not just the most important element in US foreign policy,
it is the beginning and the end of that policy. For the past 10 years,
since the US restored Aristide to power, it could have trained the Haitian
police and judiciary, invested in projects that shore up civil society and
help create a democratic culture, increased aid and encouraged fair trade -
all of which would have given Haiti a fighting chance of building a
sustainable democracy. Instead, it imposed conditions by the IMF and the
World Bank, followed it up with an embargo on the poorest country in the
western hemisphere, and when none of that worked, sent in the marines
against a nation with no army.

The second is that the US supports democracy when democracy supports the
US. When it is inconvenient, as in Aristide's case, Washington will turn
its back on it in a heartbeat. Faced with a clear choice of either sending
the marines in to protect an elected president, however flawed, or an armed
insurrection, they chose the insurrection because they didn't like the
president.

"We can't be called upon, expected or required to intervene every time
there is violence against a failed leader," said the State Department
spokesperson, Richard Boucher, last week. "We can't spend our time running
around the world and the hemisphere saving people who botched their chance
at leadership."

However, the US can be called upon not to intervene to promote violence
against elected leaders. This latest intervention did not prevent a
bloodbath - more people were killed on the day Aristide left than on any
other - and crushed what was left of democracy. Instead of breaking the
spiral of violence, it has given it a new lease of life. Given that kind of
legacy, the US should indeed stop "running around the world" to "save
people". The Bush administration is doing a good job of botching leadership
at home. There is no need to export it.

g.younge@guardian.co.uk

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