(Crossposted at
Not Geniuses)
Aristide wasn't forced out - the headline of a story that Drudge has linked to from Jacksonville, North Carolina's Daily News.
The piece quotes one source, Jim Refinger, a "former Jacksonville police sniper and retired Marine [who] was part of a private security team hired to protect Aristide's inner circle."
The claim that Aristide "wasn't forced out" is derived from these Refinger quotes:
"We left with him (but) I won't talk about where we went," Refinger said Friday from his home in Jacksonville where he just returned. "We escorted him safely out.
"Everything was done with the full knowledge and cooperation of the president. There was no forcing the president to go anywhere. We protected our principal without a shot fired and he is safe."
The problem is, these quotes (if true, and it seems likely that they are) only verify that Aristide wasn't kidnapped by force against his will. This isn't very noteworthy information, in light of the new understanding of the U.S. role in Aristide's departure that has developed in the last several days.
It is no longer believed (if it ever was in the first place) that Aristide was taken at gunpoint against his will. Instead, as the hearings with Robert Noriega strongly suggest, it seems likely that officials from the U.S. and elsewhere went to Aristide and told him that a massive bloodbath was about to occur and that they would only step in and remove Aristide from danger if he agreed to resign the presidency immediately.
Since then, Aristide has been held under what amounts to house arrest. After spreading word through his lawyer that he was the victim of a coup, he has been incommunicado. In addition, as was predicted, the international troop presence has quickly brought Haiti to a relative calm - something that could have been carried out before Aristide was removed from power.
The Daily News article is useful in another sense: Refinger gives us a good glimpse of the supposed hatred most Haitians had for Aristide:
Although the country was considered unstable, Refinger said it really wasn't a combat area.
"The threat of rebels didn't really happen until the first of the year," he said. "Most of the time we were protecting (Aristide) from people who loved him too much."
Thousands of people would show up at public events threatening to crush the president with sick children in the belief that somehow the former Catholic priest would cure them.
A lot of people also hated Aristide, seemingly to Refinger because the president came from the poor, lower class.
"It never really came to Port-au-Prince," Refinger said. "We saw some demonstrations and started hearing about it in Gonaives and Cap Haitien. The police got pretty overwhelmed, especially in the small towns, but Port-au-Prince is probably 80 percent pro-Aristide."
Of course, FoxNews anchor John Gibson offered a rather different take (courtesy of Empire Notes):
JOHN GIBSON: Folks in Haiti getting used to life without Jean-Bertrand Aristide. As for Aristide, he is in exile pushing the idea that he is the victim of a coup. Fox News senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano has more on the hazards of being a dictator. Well, one of the hazards is you get run out of the country.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO, FOX NEWS SENIOR JUDICIAL ANALYST: Absolutely. And you get run to a country which may turn on you. I mean, this Central African Republic has a horrific history of housing dictators. Emperor Bokassa I, who was reputed to be a cannibal.
GIBSON: He was actually acquitted of that charge.
NAPOLITANO: Acquitted of the cannibalism but convicted of murder. When the Central Africa Republic got tired of supporting his lavish lifestyle sent him back to the country out of which he had been kicked. They tried him for murder, sentenced him to 20 years. He was let out after a couple years and eventually died. So we don't know what life will be like for Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
It's crucial to note, though, that despite your judgement of Aristide and the character of his administration, the actions of the Bush Administration are still anti-democratic and criminally reckless. As Amy Wilentz, Haiti expert and consistent Aristide critic, writes:
It would be nice if Aristide were a saint. It's comfortable to take the side of a saint. But he isn't one. Many people died under his government who shouldn't have, and very few indeed are those who have been brought to justice for those crimes. But he didn't start out to be a brutal dictator: History and events and the international community and his own flawed character conspired against him. He does not deserve to suffer the same fate as Jean-Claude ("Baby Doc") Duvalier, who was also nudged out by the United States and replaced by a military-civilian junta.
(Crossposted at Not Geniuses)