Haiti: WTF?

Also, Run it Off's commentary is definitely OTM.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&e=1&u=/ap/20040301/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/haiti_uprising

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040301/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/un_haiti_10

i think it's mostly a matter of the us not wanting to be embarrassed by a bloodbath in their backyard but otherwise ignoring the situation as best they can, or simply managing it for maximum quiet, whatever that happens to mean

i don't know much about this; can you point me to an article that goes into detail?

i'm skeptical only because this is the "line" on so many other countries and it begins to sound overfamiliar, but you may be right.

Here’s an article about the history of America’s intervention in Haiti

Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere, so you are right that America has nothing to worry about from Haiti or any Haitian leader directly. However, America insists that the countries in its 'backyard' comply with American interests. The force of this insistence can take military form, or simply be tied to aid and loan packages. When one of these countries, or their leaders, resists Washington in some way, the American government becomes nervous. There seems to be a bad-apple-mentality in the Pentagon that fears middle and southern American mutiny. So, it is not Haiti itself which is a threat to the states, but there is a perception that if the poorest nation in the western hemisphere can flout American demands that that is an unacceptable situation and a bad example. America does not demand that human rights be upheld as a precondition for aid in these countries (Colombia, for instance) only that they comply with and actively support American interests.

http://www.exile.ru/184/war_nerd.html

relevant quote:

"In a way, the only sad thing about Haiti is the way we keep trying to make it into Ohio. Because it never will be, and only looks ridiculous trying, giving the local killers fancy democratic names. If we just let Haiti be Haiti—a crazy, gory voodoo kingdom—people might learn to respect the place."

oh that helps!

Isn't that quite close to the way the British empire described India before deciding India would be better off in under British rule?

Chavez is so next. Again.

America has certainly pushed for Aristide's removal, but I don't think anyone was in favor of the Cannibal Army uprising. But, you're right, the most important step is yet to come and hopefully the Bush administration will surprise us.

Where have you gone, Jesse Helms.

You call the line "Regime change in Iraq was policy in the Clinton administration" a "strong link[] between administrations and the foreign policy that is common between them"?! Please. What does this example have to do with Allende, the original subject? And when exactly did the Clinton administration put into effect its policy of regime change in Iraq?

I don't think I've been cynical at all. I've tried to point out America's involvement in the problem while most other people on this thread have thought only of America's intervention as a solution.

I have not posited American intervention as a solution once on this thread. Nor, I think, has anyone else.

Why'd I take flack for my statement in the first entry again?

Perhaps because the implication of the statement is that Saddam Hussein was a democratically-elected leader?

You were right, clearly, about our involvement in Aristide's removal. Apparently, it took John Kerry to fully point this out to me - even if there were no covert involvement, as an official matter, in attempting to broker a peace between Aristide and the rebels, we (and France and Canada) effectively gave the rebels a veto power that allowed the situation to develop.

Really? See below.

Nabiscobiscuit: I could very well be wrong, but it seems to me that our main "interests" there are -- if we wrap them up in one package -- to prevent refugee situations (and keep Haitian-American voters non-angry) by ensuring stability

Here the intervention as solution argument is qualified, but it stands.

dyson: well, hopefully whatever guns do make it there will help stabilize things.

Here intervention is 'hoped' for as a positive solution.

Colin Beckett: leaving Haiti alone to eat itself is no more humane a solution that engineering a puppet government.

Here intervention is proposed in the form of a fallacious opposition between doing something and doing nothing.

Clinton didn't put this policy into effect. Acting on a policy is different from having the policy. Often governments have policies that they feel, for whatever reason, that they can't get away with. Clinton had the policy nonetheless.

And what does the Nixon administration have to do with the Clinton administration, more than 20 years later?

When I brought up Iraq and Allende, this was not in order to prove that all these events are actually the same or even that they have strong links or anything to do with Aristide. The point I was making, and you know it, is that the transference of power between one administration and the next does not mean abandoning foreign policies, but more often than not sees a continuation of foreign policy. So, it is entirely possible for Nixon and Clinton to share specific aims in foreign policy.

When you laugh at the idea that Clinton might have a policy that he doesn't or can't put into effect, is very naive. YOu seem to think that Presidents of the United States are subject to no external obstructions or opposition. The quote about needing another Pearl Harbor, up thread, is a good example of the restraints placed on government. That's why I referred to it! And yet, you haven't mentioned it once in all your cynical, arrogant jibes against me. Tell me I'm wrong about reading this quote from Rumsfeld's (et al's) report as an admission of (1) a policy that is not put into effect because (2) the policy would be popularly opposed.

Rangel appears to be all over the administration on this one, posing the question pretty efficiently: At what point did we abandon the democratically elected leader of this nation and literally shoo him overseas to make way for what would be called a coup if not for the fact that we made him resign before shuttling him off?

Also, apart from going down the route of arguing over the precise workings of U.S. motives -- i.e., one says "sinister," two says "reasonably self-interested," three says "noble," which is where it seems like way too many foreign-policy discussions wind up anyway -- what do you see in future here?

Feb 12 Colin Powell said this: "The policy of the administration is not regime change, President Aristide is the elected president of Haiti."

Five days later, this: "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."

February 26: "He 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."

February 27: Aristide should "examine the situation he is in and make a careful examination of how best to serve the Haitian people at this time."

That "refuse to negotiate" is key; from what I can tell there were a lot of negotiations and concessions made with the formal opposition and the less-formal rebels, and they were all rejected, on logic of Aristide-out-or-nothing.

i don't see any gains from having aristide ousted (what does haiti have that the u.s. would be interested in really). i'd also mention that if there was serious a problem with him he wouldn't have been put back in power so many years ago. i'd mention it except for the fact that the u.s. had quite a massive track record for pulling 180º's on issues of foreign policy.

PLAYING IN THE WAR ZONE – Brett Bailey

I arrived in Haiti in early February for a two week stint to find a cast for the show I’m currently writing and designing, Vodou Nation, and to give training workshops to the performers I’ll be directing. That was almost five weeks ago, when the threat of war was just a rumour.
Until September last year, when I made my first trip here to get a feel for the country, I had little idea of what Haiti was about aside from the common stereotypes: poverty, tyranny, vodou. I didn’t really even know where the island was.
English producer Jan Ryan – who tours my South African work in the UK – had fallen for the “vodou-rock” music of Port-au-Prince-based band, RAM, and decided we would make a dynamic partnership in developing a stage show. My company consists of actors and musicians from the South African townships. Jan also pulled in Trinidadian director, Geraldine Connor – who is based at the West Yorkshire Playhouse – to co-direct with me.
During the past months I’ve read a good deal about local culture, history and religion, trying to make sense of this convoluted, multi-layered nation. I decided to tell an allegorical story of the rise and fall of a dictator (since Haiti has had its fair share of those), beginning from when Christopher Columbus made boot prints on the beach here in 1492, and ending more or less now, but with an image of transformation and hope.
I envision Vodou Nation as a celebration of sorts: of the endurance and prolific creativity of an amalgamation of once-enslaved people who have managed to forge a vivid and distinctive culture, religion, language out of so many fragments. I want to give acknowledgement to the spirit of these people who have suffered so much at the hands of the world’s Big Men. But as the shadow of civil war fell across the country my upbeat ending felt increasingly like wishful thinking.

About sixty hopefuls turned up for the auditions – mostly dancers, as drama does not feature prominently on the cultural landscape here. I selected seven of these – including Paris-based Haitian choreographer, Erol Josue – to perform alongside the eight musicians of RAM.
During the workshops – conducted with the aid of an interpreter, my Creole being limited to a few pleasantries – my performers and I worked on the dances and songs of the various vodou deities, doing improvisation exercises to free the mind and body. The contrast between the rehearsal room and the streets was startling. Angry red graffiti shouted from the walls. Time and again my lift to rehearsals made hasty U-turns as armed mobs moved towards us. Everywhere roads were cordoned off by concrete blocks, vehicle carcases and rubble. Smouldering rubber pyres left black bruises on the tarmac.
During the second week of my stay all hell broke loose in the northern towns of Gonaives, Saint Marc and Cap Haitian as various rebel factions rose up and slaughtered the stalwarts of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Tourists and Peace Corp workers left the hotel and were replaced by reporters and photographers, some direct from the bloodbaths of Iraq, others fresh-faced from college and embarking on their first action adventure.
We gathered around the bar of the grand old Oloffson Hotel, on a hillside about a mile from the city centre, with rum punches in hand watching CNN footage of towns falling. Conspiracy theories took flight and died. Gunshots peppered the night sky.

Between visits to vodou temples, and the studios of ghetto artists who fashion saintly icons out of junk, and the uptown painters with their jungle canvases of gaudy innocence, I dropped in at academics and intellectuals to milk them for information and to run my little narrative by them. These interviews were invariably interrupted by telephone calls and radio reports heralding the approaching storm.

Not knowing how long the unrest might last, we had to consider the possibility of holding the rehearsals in England rather than in Haiti as planned. With this in mind I decided to extend my ticket by five days so as to forage for more information, and to attend carnival in the sleepy town of Jacmel three hours drive to the south. The masks and costumes of carnival are inspiration for many of the costumes I am designing.
Everywhere I went I aimed my tiny digital camera at the crazy painted buses and the bright signage that adorns buildings and shops. I bought icons, dolls and sculptures to serve as models to be enlarged by the prop makers in Leeds.

By Wednesday 25 February, the day I was to have flown, Haiti had erupted into violence. Aristide’s slum-boy thugs, the Chimer, were manning roadblocks all over the city, robbing people at gunpoint. I tucked my laptop with my text on it under the seat of the taxi and headed blindly into the maelstrom.
The airport was a bun-fight with people desperate to leave, bribes being offered to get to the front of the queue, American women weeping in frustration. Possessing an out-dated ticket I was sent from pillar to post, and in the end made my way back to the Oloffson while my aeroplane soared overhead to sit out the revolution.

During the US occupation of Haiti (1915-1935) the Oloffson Hotel served as a military hospital. My bedroom is the old surgery, decked out in green tiles and with a hole in the centre of the floor where the blood drained out. I write by the overhead operating light.
The room is named “The Graham Greene Suite”. The author stayed here while writing his novel, The Comedians, set in this hotel during the bloody reign of Papa Doc and his Chimer, the Tonton Macoutes.
I never thought when I arrived here that I would witness drama with such relevance to the show I am creating. I have loved the romance of writing a play about this country in this suite, while the energy of a world gone haywire booms around me. The energy has been electrifying.

Saturday afternoon I joined the press on a tour of the smoking city. Down at the harbour warehouses rampant looting had been going on all day. According to my companions the scene was a free for all orgy that morning with cops in their black Darth Vader outfits and assault rifles trying to maintain order.
The wall of the compound had been broken and people were scurrying across the road with whatever they could carry: appliances, boxes, white sacks of grain or flour. Some men brandished rifles and hand-guns. They gestured at us to go away, and not to take pictures, but our Rastafarian guide said “we can push it a bit.”
The air was bitter with the smoke of burning rubber and plastic. Garbage covered the road. The body of a man, shot dead earlier, lay partly covered with cardboard.
Small stick-thin barefoot boys teetered past with crates of empty Coca-Cola bottles on their heads – the booty of those at the bottom of the pecking order in the Western hemisphere’s poorest nation.
Toyota pickup trucks were accelerating out of another hole in the wall and speeding away. “Vehicles confiscated by the police for not having brakes”, our guide told us us. Mobile barricades – if the drivers were able to stop them, that is.

All Saturday night the city was apocalyptic with explosions, automatic gunshots and the baying of thousands of dogs. My mind was blank, I couldn’t write. I felt numb.
Sunday news broke that Aristide had left the country. The outraged Chimer were at large on the streets and terror chewed at the hotel. Where to go if they scaled the wall?
Reporters stayed in doors, wide-eyed. Screams at the big wrought-iron gate drew us to a man who had just been shot, blood welling from his pelvis.
Midday we watched helicopters landing at the palace and calm began to descend, though gunfire continued to crackle and black smoke billowed from the city square.
When we went out in the afternoon looters were ransacking shops, the streets were littered with debris, and bodies lay bleeding by the roadside.
Late Sunday night we heard the heavy thrum of US cargo planes overhead. I accompanied journalists to the airport Monday morning where about 150 US Marines had taken control. They stood around looking mean and macho in their fatigues and helmets. Their haversacks and trunks of ammunition lay in neat rows. A stack of Evian Water glittered in the early sunlight.
They were here to restore the rule of law, they told us, until a UN multi-national team takes over.

Later I witnessed the blazing arrival of Chamblain and Phillipe and their soldiers in 4x4 vehicles in the city centre. Thousands of jubilant people thronged the streets singing and dancing, burning posters of Aristide on bonfires while white doves flocked overhead.
Is this the end of another bout of oppression and brutality in the Haitian chronicles? Does a new era of harmony begin now?
Where are the heavily armed rebel forces that over-ran the northern half of the country two weeks ago, I asked a local writer in the sitting room of the Oloffson this morning.
“They are here, keeping a low profile, waiting for an opportunity to make a move.”
And Guy Phillipe, their good looking young commander, who is now speaking about Haiti as if it were his own country – is he a local hero?
“He is like a frying pan when there is a fire,” replied my friend philosophically. “You grab it because it is the only thing available to beat out the flames, but you don’t want to display it on the mantelpiece.”
My performers were arriving for their first English lesson – to enable them to get by in England during their three month tour beginning in June. Their smiling, eager faces brightened my spirits. In a country of so much pain and heaviness, what is needed more than anything is acknowledgement, investment and opportunity for growth. My conviction to end Vodou Nation on a positive note is stronger than ever.

Tonight the city is black. Gunshots puncture the silence and US Marines watch from the palace. The airports are going to remain closed for another five days.
It feels that this thing is not yet over.

this is from the article linked upthread as Here’s an article about Bush’s campaign against Aristide

Washington’s stated attitude to the uprising has been contradictory. On February 12, State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher declared that “reaching a political settlement will require some fairly thorough changes in the way Haiti is governed, and how the security situation is maintained”. The New York Times interpreted this to mean that “the Bush administration has placed itself in the unusual position of saying it may accept the ouster of a democratic government”.

the full article