Dear Diary:
Is our President a hypocrite or is our President a hypocrite? Our moral, Christian head of state is pulling a Nero--he will stand by and let Haiti's Christian civil society be massacred.
There are 2 factions, the Creoles (urban mulatto Haitian elite, largely Catholic) and the Bossales (country and shantytown dwellers, direct descendents of slaves). As seen through the local lens, the Creoles are the masters, the Bossales are the slaves. Aristide's mandate was to create a new, integrated middle class. Of course to do that he needed financial support from Washington which the racist cabal in power has cut.
The rebel leaders are thugs--alleged ex-CIA operatives cashiered in 1997 when the Haitian army was disbanded. They're responsible for not one but several massacres in 1994. You want names? Here they are: Guy Philippe, Louis Jodel Chamblain, and Jean Tatoune.
The rebels, who are holding all the cards, are not the political opposition. The political opposition are those Creoles who protest Aristide's failure to forge an new educated, mixed middle class. They claim Aristide has gone from a democratic reformer to an autocrat.
The opposition has no influence over the rebels. Aristide supporters in Cap Haitian are being pulled out of their homes and summarily executed while the property is put to the torch. Port-au-Prince is the last city to resist the onslaught. There is no standing Army to defend the capital, police have fled their posts. The civilian population, including the political opposition, is being called upon to mount a defense against a ruthless, armed mob.
Bush prefers to watch the mayhem from Washington. Oh, he crows about how moral and Christian he is, how he is the defender of freedom and democracy. Well here is a test case, Mr. Bush. Not that there is any credibility remaining to this administration, but if they do not intervene, they will be definitively and irrevocably exposed for what we know they are: lying frauds.