20163: Esser: US-Haiti by Noam Chomsky (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

Z Magazine
http://www.zmag.org

US-Haiti
by Noam Chomsky; March 09, 2004

Those who have any concern for Haiti will naturally want to
understand how its most recent tragedy has been unfolding. And for
those who have had the privilege of any contact with the people of
this tortured land, it is not just natural but inescapable.
Nevertheless, we make a serious error if we focus too narrowly on the
events of the recent past, or even on Haiti alone. The crucial issue
for us is what we should be doing about what is taking place. That
would be true even if our options and our responsibility were
limited; far more so when they are immense and decisive, as in the
case of Haiti. And even more so because the course of the terrible
story was predictable years ago -- if we failed to act to prevent it.
And fail we did. The lessons are clear, and so important that they
would be the topic of daily front-page articles in a free press.

Reviewing what was taking place in Haiti shortly after Clinton
"restored democracy" in 1994, I was compelled to conclude, unhappily,
in Z Magazine that "It would not be very surprising, then, if the
Haitian operations become another catastrophe," and if so, "It is not
a difficult chore to trot out the familiar phrases that will explain
the failure of our mission of benevolence in this failed society."
The reasons were evident to anyone who chose to look. And the
familiar phrases again resound, sadly and predictably.

There is much solemn discussion today explaining, correctly, that
democracy means more than flipping a lever every few years.
Functioning democracy has preconditions. One is that the population
should have some way to learn what is happening in the world. The
real world, not the self-serving portrait offered by the
"establishment press," which is disfigured by its "subservience to
state power" and "the usual hostility to popular movements" - the
accurate words of Paul Farmer, whose work on Haiti is, in its own
way, perhaps even as remarkable as what he has accomplished within
the country. Farmer was writing in 1993, reviewing mainstream
commentary and reporting on Haiti, a disgraceful record that goes
back to the days of Wilson's vicious and destructive invasion in
1915, and on to the present. The facts are extensively documented,
appalling, and shameful. And they are deemed irrelevant for the usual
reasons: they do not conform to the required self-image, and so are
efficiently dispatched deep into the memory hole, though they can be
unearthed by those who have some interest in the real world.

They will rarely be found, however, in the "establishment press."
Keeping to the more liberal and knowledgeable end of the spectrum,
the standard version is that in "failed states" like Haiti and Iraq
the US must become engaged in benevolent "nation-building" to
"enhance democracy," a "noble goal" but one that may be beyond our
means because of the inadequacies of the objects of our solicitude.
In Haiti, despite Washington's dedicated efforts from Wilson to FDR
while the country was under Marine occupation, "the new dawn of
Haitian democracy never came." And "not all America's good wishes,
nor all its Marines, can achieve [democracy today] until the Haitians
do it themselves" (H.D.S. Greenway, Boston Globe). As New York Times
correspondent R.W. Apple recounted two centuries of history in 1994,
reflecting on the prospects for Clinton's endeavor to "restore
democracy" then underway, "Like the French in the 19th century, like
the Marines who occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934, the American forces
who are trying to impose a new order will confront a complex and
violent society with no history of democracy."

Apple does appear to go a bit beyond the norm in his reference to
Napoleon's savage assault on Haiti, leaving it in ruins, in order to
prevent the crime of liberation in the world's richest colony, the
source of much of France's wealth. But perhaps that undertaking too
satisfies the fundamental criterion of benevolence: it was supported
by the United States, which was naturally outraged and frightened by
"the first nation in the world to argue the case of universal freedom
for all humankind, revealing the limited definition of freedom
adopted by the French and American revolutions." So Haitian historian
Patrick Bellegarde-Smith writes, accurately describing the terror in
the slave state next door, which was not relieved even when Haiti's
successful liberation struggle, at enormous cost, opened the way to
the expansion to the West by compelling Napoleon to accept the
Louisiana Purchase. The US continued to do what it could to strangle
Haiti, even supporting France's insistence that Haiti pay a huge
indemnity for the crime of liberating itself, a burden it has never
escaped - and France, of course, dismisses with elegant disdain
Haiti's request, recently under Aristide, that it at least repay the
indemnity, forgetting the responsibilities that a civilized society
would accept.

The basic contours of what led to the current tragedy are pretty
clear. Just beginning with the 1990 election of Aristide (far too
narrow a time frame), Washington was appalled by the election of a
populist candidate with a grass-roots constituency just as it had
been appalled by the prospect of the hemisphere's first free country
on its doorstep two centuries earlier. Washington's traditional
allies in Haiti naturally agreed. "The fear of democracy exists, by
definitional necessity, in elite groups who monopolize economic and
political power," Bellegarde-Smith observes in his perceptive history
of Haiti; whether in Haiti or the US or anywhere else.

The threat of democracy in Haiti in 1991 was even more ominous
because of the favorable reaction of the international financial
institutions (World Bank, IADB) to Aristide's programs, which
awakened traditional concerns over the "virus" effect of successful
independent development. These are familiar themes in international
affairs: American independence aroused similar concerns among
European leaders. The dangers are commonly perceived to be
particularly grave in a country like Haiti, which had been ravaged by
France and then reduced to utter misery by a century of US
intervention. If even people in such dire circumstances can take
their fate into their own hands, who knows what might happen
elsewhere as the "contagion spreads."

The Bush I administration reacted to the disaster of democracy by
shifting aid from the democratically elected government to what are
called "democratic forces": the wealthy elites and the business
sectors, who, along with the murderers and torturers of the military
and paramilitaries, had been lauded by the current incumbents in
Washington, in their Reaganite phase, for their progress in
"democratic development," justifying lavish new aid. The praise came
in response to ratification by the Haitian parliament of a law
granting Washington's client killer and torturer Baby Doc Duvalier
the authority to suspend the rights of any political party without
reasons. The law passed by a majority of 99.98%. It therefore marked
a positive step towards democracy as compared with the 99% approval
of a 1918 law granting US corporations the right to turn the country
into a US plantation, passed by 5% of the population after the
Haitian Parliament was disbanded at gunpoint by Wilson's Marines when
it refused to accept this "progressive measure," essential for
"economic development." Their reaction to Baby Doc's encouraging
progress towards democracy was characteristic - worldwide -- on the
part of the visionaries who are now entrancing educated opinion with
their dedication to bringing democracy to a suffering world -
although, to be sure, their actual exploits are being tastefully
rewritten to satisfy current needs.

Refugees fleeing to the US from the terror of the US-backed
dictatorships were forcefully returned, in gross violation of
international humanitarian law. The policy was reversed when a
democratically elected government took office. Though the flow of
refugees reduced to a trickle, they were mostly granted political
asylum. Policy returned to normal when a military junta overthrew the
Aristide government after seven months, and state terrorist
atrocities rose to new heights. The perpetrators were the army - the
inheritors of the National Guard left by Wilson's invaders to control
the population - and its paramilitary forces. The most important of
these, FRAPH, was founded by CIA asset Emmanuel Constant, who now
lives happily in Queens, Clinton and Bush II having dismissed
extradition requests -- because he would reveal US ties to the
murderous junta, it is widely assumed. Constant's contributions to
state terror were, after all, meager; merely prime responsibility for
the murder of 4-5000 poor blacks.

Recall the core element of the Bush doctrine, which has "already
become a de facto rule of international relations," Harvard's Graham
Allison writes in Foreign Affairs: "those who harbor terrorists are
as guilty as the terrorists themselves," in the President's words,
and must be treated accordingly, by large-scale bombing and invasion.

When Aristide was overthrown by the 1991 military coup, the
Organization of American States declared an embargo. Bush I announced
that the US would violate it by exempting US firms. He was thus "fine
tuning" the embargo for the benefit of the suffering population, the
New York Times reported. Clinton authorized even more extreme
violations of the embargo: US trade with the junta and its wealthy
supporters sharply increased. The crucial element of the embargo was,
of course, oil. While the CIA solemnly testified to Congress that the
junta "probably will be out of fuel and power very shortly" and "Our
intelligence efforts are focused on detecting attempts to circumvent
the embargo and monitoring its impact," Clinton secretly authorized
the Texaco Oil Company to ship oil to the junta illegally, in
violation of presidential directives. This remarkable revelation was
the lead story on the AP wires the day before Clinton sent the
Marines to "restore democracy," impossible to miss - I happened to be
monitoring AP wires that day and saw it repeated prominently over and
over -- and obviously of enormous significance for anyone who wanted
to understand what was happening. It was suppressed with truly
impressive discipline, though reported in industry journals along
with scant mention buried in the business press.

Also efficiently suppressed were the crucial conditions that Clinton
imposed for Aristide's return: that he adopt the program of the
defeated US candidate in the 1990 elections, a former World Bank
official who had received 14% of the vote. We call this "restoring
democracy," a prime illustration of how US foreign policy has entered
a "noble phase" with a "saintly glow," the national press explained.
The harsh neoliberal program that Aristide was compelled to adopt was
virtually guaranteed to demolish the remaining shreds of economic
sovereignty, extending Wilson's progressive legislation and similar
US-imposed measures since.

As democracy was thereby restored, the World Bank announced that "The
renovated state must focus on an economic strategy centered on the
energy and initiative of Civil Society, especially the private
sector, both national and foreign." That has the merit of honesty:
Haitian Civil Society includes the tiny rich elite and US
corporations, but not the vast majority of the population, the
peasants and slum-dwellers who had committed the grave sin of
organizing to elect their own president. World Bank officers
explained that the neoliberal program would benefit the "more open,
enlightened, business class" and foreign investors, but assured us
that the program "is not going to hurt the poor to the extent it has
in other countries" subjected to structural adjustment, because the
Haitian poor already lacked minimal protection from proper economic
policy, such as subsidies for basic goods. Aristide's Minister in
charge of rural development and agrarian reform was not notified of
the plans to be imposed on this largely peasant society, to be
returned by "America's good wishes" to the track from which it veered
briefly after the regrettable democratic election in 1990.

Matters then proceeded in their predictable course. A 1995 USAID
report explained that the "export-driven trade and investment policy"
that Washington imposed will "relentlessly squeeze the domestic rice
farmer," who will be forced to turn to agroexport, with incidental
benefits to US agribusiness and investors. Despite their extreme
poverty, Haitian rice farmers are quite efficient, but cannot
possibly compete with US agribusiness, even if it did not receive 40%
of its profits from government subsidies, sharply increased under the
Reaganites who are again in power, still producing enlightened
rhetoric about the miracles of the market. We now read that Haiti
cannot feed itself, another sign of a "failed state."

A few small industries were still able to function, for example,
making chicken parts. But US conglomerates have a large surplus of
dark meat, and therefore demanded the right to dump their excess
products in Haiti. They tried to do the same in Canada and Mexico
too, but there illegal dumping could be barred. Not in Haiti,
compelled to submit to efficient market principles by the US
government and the corporations it serves.

One might note that the Pentagon's proconsul in Iraq, Paul Bremer,
ordered a very similar program to be instituted there, with the same
beneficiaries in mind. That's also called "enhancing democracy." In
fact, the record, highly revealing and important, goes back to the
18th century. Similar programs had a large role in creating today's
third world. Meanwhile the powerful ignored the rules, except when
they could benefit from them, and were able to become rich developed
societies; dramatically the US, which led the way in modern
protectionism and, particularly since World War II, has relied
crucially on the dynamic state sector for innovation and development,
socializing risk and cost.

The punishment of Haiti became much more severe under Bush II --
there are differences within the narrow spectrum of cruelty and
greed. Aid was cut and international institutions were pressured to
do likewise, under pretexts too outlandish to merit discussion. They
are extensively reviewed in Paul Farmer's Uses of Haiti, and in some
current press commentary, notably by Jeffrey Sachs (Financial Times)
and Tracy Kidder (New York Times).

Putting details aside, what has happened since is eerily similar to
the overthrow of Haiti's first democratic government in 1991. The
Aristide government, once again, was undermined by US planners, who
understood, under Clinton, that the threat of democracy can be
overcome if economic sovereignty is eliminated, and presumably also
understood that economic development will also be a faint hope under
such conditions, one of the best-confirmed lessons of economic
history. Bush II planners are even more dedicated to undermining
democracy and independence, and despised Aristide and the popular
organizations that swept him to power with perhaps even more passion
than their predecessors. The forces that reconquered the country are
mostly inheritors of the US-installed army and paramilitary
terrorists.

Those who are intent on diverting attention from the US role will
object that the situation is more complex -- as is always true -- and
that Aristide too was guilty of many crimes. Correct, but if he had
been a saint the situation would hardly have developed very
differently, as was evident in 1994, when the only real hope was that
a democratic revolution in the US would make it possible to shift
policy in a more civilized direction.

What is happening now is awful, maybe beyond repair. And there is
plenty of short-term responsibility on all sides. But the right way
for the US and France to proceed is very clear. They should begin
with payment of enormous reparations to Haiti (France is perhaps even
more hypocritical and disgraceful in this regard than the US). That,
however, requires construction of functioning democratic societies in
which, at the very least, people have a prayer of knowing what's
going on. Commentary on Haiti, Iraq, and other "failed societies" is
quite right in stressing the importance of overcoming the "democratic
deficit" that substantially reduces the significance of elections. It
does not, however, draw the obvious corollary: the lesson applies in
spades to a country where "politics is the shadow cast on society by
big business," in the words of America's leading social philosopher,
John Dewey, describing his own country in days when the blight had
spread nowhere near as far as it has today.

For those who are concerned with the substance of democracy and human
rights, the basic tasks at home are also clear enough. They have been
carried out before, with no slight success, and under incomparably
harsher conditions elsewhere, including the slums and hills of Haiti.
We do not have to submit, voluntary, to living in a failed state
suffering from an enormous democratic deficit.
.