26293: Dailey re 26258: A Reply (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Peter Dailey <phdailey@msn.com>

[Note from Bob Corbett:  As most of you know I don't normally post items 
which have PERSONAl attacks on people who have posted on the Corbett list.

However, I have made an exception in this case since I erred and allowed a 
post that was a personal attack on Peter Dailey, and in his reply he has 
things I would normally not accept.

This is a one time exception and I won't post any reply that has any 
personal attack, and hope I don't slip up and post any more.

I just believe in civil exchange where one can disagree vehemently with 
someone's IDEAS without attacking the person.  I guess it's my training in 
philosophy which is mainly that way.  It's also some old fashion sense of 
decency too.

Bob Corbett]

> From Peter Dailey:



Apparently Guy Antoine has chosen to take my comments personally.

At present, the human rights of ordinary Haitians are under an assault as 
severe as any in recent memory. The complicity of the interim government in 
this has been repeatedly underscored in reports by frontline human rights 
organizations. However, unlike the situation for most of the Lavalas years, 
these abuses spring from a multiplicity of sources, as I'm sure Antoine 
recognizes, and nothing is served by denying this. As the Swiss historian Jacob 
Burkhardt famously observed: "The denial of complexity is the beginning of 
tyranny."

There is no reason why an analysis should not focus on the responsibility of a 
single actor- the HNP, Department of Justice, Chimeres, MINUSTAH, Aristide, 
etc- although to imply that this represents the complete picture is morally 
irresponsible and intellectually dishonest. Nor, since human rights violations 
are fundamentally assaults against the individual, do such analyses have to be 
comparative. Were Kevin Pina to have been jailed indefinitely for his minor 
offense instead of held and released the following day I doubt he would have 
been vastly interested in knowing how much better or worse he might have fared 
under Duvalier, or Aristide, or Stenio Vincent, etc.

Which brings me to Antoine's thoroughly tendentious post, which he dedicates 
appropriately enough to Kevin Pina. In his subsequent Riposte, Guy explains 
that his subject was the narrow one of government interference with freedom of 
the press. In doing so he pinpoints one of the few areas where, in comparison 
to its Lavalas predecessors, the interim government would appear to be paragons 
of legality and to have ushered in a new golden age, not withstanding 
Latortue's criticism of Delva and the brief detention of Pina and Restil. 
However, Haiti remains a place where one's political opinions can still get one 
killed. Had I realized that Antoine's topic was not freedom of the press but 
only interference in press freedom by the interim government I obviously would 
have had no cause to wonder at Antoine's omission of the name of Jacques Roche. 
I know no more about the Roche case than that the manner of his death strongly 
suggests that it was a political crime rather than a mere kidnapping for 
ransom. If, as Antoine states, there have indeed been arrests, and a trial and 
convictions follow we will perhaps know more. Should this in fact happen, 
however, it will be one of the few times in a recent Haitian history that has 
not lacked cases of this nature. I imagine that like most other people 
confronted by murders like those of Jean Dominique, Abdias Jean, or Brignol 
Lindor, I will continue to make whatever inferences or draw whatever 
conclusions it seems to me the evidence justifies. Antoine's argument, like the 
rest of his post, is short on logic and long on sanctimoniousness.

Antoine says that the point of his leaden sarcasm- striking in a writer notable 
in past for a ready wit and enlivening sense of humor- is that the French, 
Canadians, U.S. et al. have betrayed his expectations that "the fruit you put 
into the bowl were better than those you discarded." It must be wonderful for a 
writer to have metaphors like that right at his fingertips! However, his 
Riposte has almost nothing to say about MINUSTAH or Haitian Nationalism and a 
whole lot about the outrage I've apparently done to his Feelings. I did not 
call Antoine a scoundrel- this would be taking his comments a great deal more 
seriously than circumstances warrant. Nor did I question his integrity, 
although it is clear from the speed with which he set out to exploit Kevin 
Pina's arrest, and the wide range of parties at which he chose to point the 
finger that Antoine is obviously not averse to attempting to score cheap 
political points. Insofar as I am familiar with his writing its principal 
shortcoming has always been Antoine's outsized and well nourished capacity for 
self deception, particularly where Aristide and Lavalas are concerned. A 
celebrated example of this was Antoine's Open Letter to Aristide, published on 
the Corbett List, a notable exercise in bootlicking that thanked Aristide for 
finally condemning political violence and stating that if the rumors connecting 
Aristide to the chimeres had been true, Antoine would have considered Aristide 
morally unfit to be president. I don't know if you will find this on Windows on 
Haiti or not.

In reading over my original post, the one thing I do regret is that in 
comparing Windows on Haiti to the IJDH, HLLN, Fondasyon Trant Septanm, and 
Haiti Progres I appeared to be equating them. The latter are all organizations 
whose sole raison d'etre is to promote the political fortunes of a single 
individual. Windows on Haiti is an online magazine devoted to a variety of 
topics, whose political section provides a forum for a number of different 
points of view. I hope it will continue to appear well after most of the 
current political actors have sunken into well deserved obscurity. Hyppolite 
Pierre has written to the Corbett List to say that Guy would like to republish 
my comments and his Riposte on Windows on Haiti. Although I would have thought 
that an editor's injured sense of amour propre was not a topic of particular 
general interest I have no objection to his doing so provided that he includes 
these remarks as well.

Peter Dailey