30771: Kondrat (comment) The Lancet's Big Picture (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Peter Kondrat <kondr8@gmail.com>

There's a saying in Italian: *La aritmetica no e opinione.

*
But what do you do if the numbers show you to endorse large-scale human
rights abuses? For Aristide haters, the answer is to insinuate, without a
shred of evidence, that the person who did the calculations may have fudged
the numbers.

Amazingly, people who claim to believe in democracy are still arguing about
whether it was a good idea to overthrow the constitutional government of
Haiti twice in the last two decades. Particularly with the horrendous,
violent and chaotic aftermaths of each of those coups (Cedras in 1992-1994
and Latortue in 2004 - 2006), who could make the case that upending a
democratically elected head of state was a good thing? Yet, of course, you
hear people -- people who are not hard-core fascists by any means --
cheering the US-backed coups and attempted coups in Guatemala, Cuba,
Nicaragua, Grenada, Chile, Venezuela, Haiti . . . the list seems endless.
Sometimes the rationale is anti-communism, or anti-populism. Sometimes there
are vague allegations of corruption or malfeasance, but nearly always with a
standard that few if any other governments -- starting with the one in
Washington -- could possibly measure up to. Sometimes there are arguments
that mention economic advantage or strategic convenience. **(So one question
that this raises is this: have Bush and Cheney comported themselves better
than President Aristide, so much better in fact that Bush and Cheney deserve
not to be deposed by force, but Aristide did deserve that fate? )

The reason the Lancet study seems to stick in the craws of so many who
(privately or publicly) cheered the overthrow of the duly elected government
of Haiti in February 2004 is that it puts the lie to their belief -- a key
belief they must cling to in order to justify so radical, so antidemocratic
a position -- that the consequences of deposing Haiti's elected president
were not really that severe, and did not really negatively affect that many
citizens. Here is a scientific study that Aristide haters are desperate to
discredit, because it tells us in quantifiable terms what a nightmare was
ushered in when US, French and Canadian forces (military and otherwise)
collaborated to bring about the removal of Haiti's president from office,
and flew him at gunpoint into exile. Let's not quibble about whether Mr.
Aristide had a gun to his head or not when he signed his resignation letter:
there is no doubt that foreign forces were working hard to create the
conditions that made it unthinkable for a head of state with a wife and
children to stay in the capital.

The consequences of the overthrow of Jean-Bertrand Aristide were, of course,
catastrophic: the country was ostracized, immobilzed, traumatized, polarized
and demonized for two years after the coup. Foreign investment and the
middle class fled. Kidnappings became almost as commonplace as hunger.
Hundreds or thousands of political prisoners were held with impunity. Graft
and corruption reached new heights, or depths. The result of demolishing
Haiti's constitutional government and replacing it with an unelected
government was an unmitigated human rights disaster for thousands of
Haitians.

As I have argued here before, the anti-constitutionalists find themselves
now in a similar position to those who tepidly backed the invasion and
occupation of Iraq. Their ulterior motives have become clear in retrospect.
The Lancet study simply sheds a light on the horrific consequences of
advocating, overtly or implicitly, the overthrow of Haiti's imperfect but
legitimate constituional government.

Peter Kondrat