Haiti: WTF?

Which is not to say I think you're hugely misguided or anything, and for the record it's not like I know loads and loads about Haiti -- it's just that I think the traditional U.S.-interests analysis you're pushing isn't particularly effective here. Because the U.S. interest is, in this case, quite likely very simple: the goal, as always, is to sort of screw the ideological specifics and just get this county to a state where we can safely mostly-ignore it.

And there are perfectly good reasons to criticize that, which is the one place where i can semi-agree with you. As in, let's go over a list of reasons why we wouldn't take a hand-off approach to Haiti -- reasons I'm not necessarily advancing or defending but just offering up as surely the ones in operation: (a) refugees, (b) Haitian-American voters, (c) even worse chaos and violence that eventually shames the "uncaring" U.S. into stepping in anyway, eventually, plus of course (d) inclination to stabilize the thing you know and can live with rather than open the door to something even non-ideologues couldn't stomach. And it's that last point, sensible as it is, that I think you're trying to hammer at, right? Because it's Not Our Place to be stomaching or not-stomaching the government of another nation, right? And I semi-agree with you on that one, but not universally, because that logic, carried to its extreme, means abandoning even our more worthwhile principles.

And you'd have to say more than you're currently saying to convince me that Haiti is a situation that deserves that kind of neglect.

American interest in keeping Aristide in power isn't necessarily due to apathy or just an interest in keeping things calm. Right now there is no one to fill the Aristide's position if he's deposed. However ineffectual Aristide is, The Cannibal Army (I'm sorry, "The Gonaives Resistance Front") is a lot less prepared (and less willing) to try and rebuiled Haiti.

I try not to get involved in political threads anymore (I get in them, then don't go back for a few days, and lose all interest in debate), but here I gotta say Skottie's OTM. Prime Example:

"and until then, you will simply believe all the propaganda you get in favour of American intervention?"

Stomaching and not-stomaching other governments, when it is backed with the military - ie imposing stomach-able governments on other nations - is problematic, I agree. And yes, that's is my main gripe with Americans contemplating what they should do about the situation in Haiti.

In run it off's weltanschauung, the U.S. is always either in "uncaring" or "meddling imperialistic" mode. This binary status is convenient because whatever the situation, the U.S. is always wrong.

Show me where I did this. I haven't once talked about the US being uncaring and I don't think the US would be uncaring if it kept out of other nation's democratic business. And, to reiterate, I am not limiting my anti-imperialism to the US.

By the way, this is not pacifism. If there is good reason to go to war - against an aggressive Fascism, say - then I think all governments should fight for their principles against that fascism. I'm not a pacifist, I'm anti-imperlialist. If America is flexing its imperialist muscles a lot lately, I don't consider that my fault and so my opposition to it will naturally mean arguing against American foreign policy. That doesn't make me anti-American. It makes me anti-imperialist.

Gabbneb, after being told about the strong links between administrations and the foreign policy that is common between them: Scales falling from eyes! Well yes, of course. And?

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."

The plot to assassinate Haitian President Jovenel Moïse ran through South Florida, according to statements of captured Colombians who said they were hired by a Miami-area security firm.https://t.co/551RqWIm7s

— Miami Herald (@MiamiHerald) July 10, 2021

Relevant commentary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ55CEm6wpY