27459: (comment) Chamberlain: NYTimes article (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

A friend sent me this comment on the NYTimes article.  I thought would be
of interest to the group.  He wishes to remain anoymous.

__________


It would wrong to see this as conclusive evidence for the proposition that
Aristide was overthrown by a cabal
of Republican hardliners. The Aristide regime self-destructed. In large
part because it alienated not just the
elite but also the middle classes and turned them into its opponents, while
failing to maintain active support
in the masses (except from the chimère gangs). Stanley Lucas and the IRI
arguably made a significant
contribution to the process by encouraging all the opposition political
forces not to negotiate, and keeping
them in line. But when it came to the crunch, in the last few days before
Aristide's departure, G-184 and the
opposition politicians could not have agreed to a power-sharing deal with
Aristide without losing the support
of their middle-class base, which was totally opposed to a deal that would
have left Aristide in the palace.

Nonetheless by helping to block a negotiated settlement between the
opposition and Aristide, Lucas and the IRI
helped keep international financial aid to a minimum throughout the second
Aristide administration and this
clearly exacerbated the tensions and contributed to Aristide's loss of
active support in the masses. And in
the last few days, the lack of a power-sharing deal gave Colin Powell his
grounds for not stepping in with a
military rescue operation.

Lucas may well also have been a vehicle for back-door contacts with Guy
Philippe, Paul Arcelin and other
anti-Aristide exiles in the DR. But it is hard to imagine that there was
active, pre-meditated support from
sectors within the US government for the rebellion staged by Philippe and
Jodel Chamblain. It was a sudden,
improvised reaction by a handful of desperados to a spontaneous and very
localized revolt by a formerly
pro-Aristide chimère gang in Gonaïves. No one at that stage thought they
had any chance of success. It
succeeded because the regime's political contradictions had ravaged the
police force from within, and eroded
its will to fight, but that only became apparent later.

__________

Another person commented:


The article is good on the infighting between US agencies, but much less so
on Haiti and offers no insights
into the reasons for Aristide's fall. It is all about Dean Curran and Luigi
Einaudi's frustration with the
IRI, Stanley Lucas, Otto Reich and the like. But as far as Haiti is
concerned, the rivalry between Democrats
and Republicans does not explain everything. The article says too little
about Aristide's growing
authoritarianism, his links with the chimères and drug traffickers, and why
he spent more money on his US
lobby and a private army (provided by the San Francisco-based Steele
Foundation) than on education.