President Obama plans to send former presidents Clinton and George W. Bush to Haiti to assist with the relief efforts. What is he thinking? Is he afraid that the Republicans are going to cry if Dubya continues to clear brush on his ranch?
Why would he send the man who is reviled throughout Haiti to "help" them? A little history lesson to illustrate why sending Dubya there is a TERRIBLE idea.
In 1990, Jean-Bertrand Aristide became the first democratically elected civilian president in Haiti's history.
Aristide’s elevation from slum priest to presidential candidate took place against a background of right-wing death squads and threatened military coups. He rose quickly in the eyes of Haitians, but his stock plummeted in the United States. The New York Times, which relies heavily on informants who can speak English or French, had few kind words for him. ‘He’s a cross between the Ayatollah and Fidel,’ one Haitian businessman was quoted as saying. ‘If it comes to a choice between the ultra-left and the ultra-right, I’m ready to form an alliance with the ultra-right.’ Haitians knew, however, that Aristide would win any democratic election, and on 16 December 1990, he got 67 per cent of the vote in a field of 12 candidates. No run-off was required.
The United States might not have been able to prevent Aristide’s landslide victory, but there was plenty they could do to undermine him. The most effective method, adopted by the first Bush administration, was to fund both the opposition – their poor showing at the polls was no reason, it appears, to cut off aid to them – and the military. Declassified records now make it clear that the CIA and other US groups helped to create and fund a paramilitary group called FRAPH, which rose to prominence after a military coup that ousted Aristide in September 1991. Thousands of civilians were killed and hundreds of thousands fled overseas or across the border into the Dominican Republic. For the next three years Haiti was run by military-civilian juntas as ruthless as the Duvaliers.
In October 1994, under Clinton, the US military intervened and restored Aristide to power, with a little over a year of his term left to run. Although authorised by the UN, the restoration was basically a US operation. Then, seven weeks after Aristide’s return, Republicans took control of the Congress, and influential Republicans have worked ever since to block aid to Haiti or burden it with preconditions.
Enter Dubya. And the "democracy-building" International Republican Institute. Hundreds of millions of dollars flowed into Haiti – to the anti-Aristide opposition, for UN occupation, and for Halliburton's "support services".
NYT:
Mr. Curran accused the democracy-building group, the International Republican Institute, of trying to undermine the reconciliation process after disputed 2000 Senate elections threw Haiti into a violent political crisis. The group’s leader in Haiti, Stanley Lucas, an avowed Aristide opponent from the Haitian elite, counseled the opposition to stand firm, and not work with Mr. Aristide, as a way to cripple his government and drive him from power, said Mr. Curran, whose account is supported in crucial parts by other diplomats and opposition figures. Many of these people spoke publicly about the events for the first time.
Mr. Curran, a 30-year Foreign Service veteran and a Clinton appointee retained by President Bush, also accused Mr. Lucas of telling the opposition that he, not the ambassador, represented the Bush administration’s true intentions. Records show that Mr. Curran warned his bosses in Washington that Mr. Lucas’s behavior was contrary to American policy and "risked us being accused of attempting to destabilize the government." Yet when he asked for tighter controls over the I.R.I. in the summer of 2002, he hit a roadblock after high officials in the State Department and National Security Council expressed support for the pro-democracy group, an American aid official wrote at the time.
The International Republican Institute is one of several prominent nonprofit groups that receive federal funds to help countries develop the mechanisms of democracy, like campaigning and election monitoring. Of all the groups, though, the I.R.I. is closest to the administration. President Bush picked its president, Lorne W. Craner, to run his administration’s democracy-building efforts. The institute, which works in more than 60 countries, has seen its federal financing nearly triple in three years, from $26 million in 2003 to $75 million in 2005.
In 2004, Aristide was ousted in an American-backed coup.
The U.S. administration then went about arming those involved in widespread human rights violations mainly aimed at the supporters of Aristide's party, Lavalas..
The Bush administration has been accused of ignoring its own arms embargo and overseeing the sale of $7m-worth (£3.7m) of weapons to the Haitian government to equip its police force.
Human rights groups say the police carry out routine executions of dissidents and weapons are often illegally funnelled to armed militia.
Robert Muggah of the Swiss-based Small Arms Survey, a non-profit group, said that last year the US effected the sale of thousands of weapons to the interim government headed by Gerard Latortue, despite a 13-year arms embargo. "They are meant to brace up a shaky security force, but the reality is they could actually undermine security by jeopardising an innovative disarmament effort just getting under way," said Mr Muggah, who has spent several months in Haiti interviewing diplomats and UN officials for a report.
Here's what U.S.-sponsored mercenaries and the UN forces were upto:
via Mother Jones
Here is one unlikely proposal to help Haiti, taken from Juan Cole's email listserv this morning:
Memo to Obama on Haiti: "It's reported that Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase combined have set aside $47 billion for bonuses," says an NPR account, according to Cole. "Haiti's annual gross domestic product in nominal terms is about $7 bn. a year. Seize the bonuses. Send them to Haiti."
And do not spit on the faces of the Haitian people by sending George W. Bush there.
EDITED TO ADD: I'm sure President Obama did not intend to insult the Haitian people. He's trying to appear bipartisan and is insulting them inadvertently in the process. There are other Republicans he could send if bipartisanship is his goal.