In today's WSJ, right-wing Latin American oligarch apologist Mary Anastasia O'Grady demonizes both Aristide of Haiti and Zelaya in Honduras using the usual discredited claims. What caught my eye is the fact that she completely omits the insane amount of slaughter that the 1991 military regime in Haiti engaged in (Washington Post, 22 Jan. 1992), :
A systematic campaign of political repression led by security forces has claimed more than 1,500 lives in Haiti since a military coup Sept. 30, a prominent human rights agency says.
In a lengthy report for public release today, London-based Amnesty International details allegations of massacres in Haitian slums, routine political arrests, torture and disappearances and regular attacks on grassroots labor, community and church organizations.
Whatever Aristide's faults, they don't even begin to compare to the repression and bloodshed his opponents are responsible for. It's true that Aristide's supporters once and a while engaged in mob violence, but this was mostly defensive action against ex-Macoutes and other various neo-Duvalierist thugs. To even compare Aristide to the Duvaliers or Cedras is insulting to anyone who gives a shit about human rights in the Western Hemisphere.
For more information about Haiti, I direct you to two of my earlier diaries: "Book Review: "Damming the Flood" by Peter Hallward, pt 1" and "McCain and the International Republican Institute." Both detail the numerous actions the U.S. has taken to undermine Aristide and his popular movement. It's true that there are lessons here to be learned about Honduras from Haiti, but not in the way Ms. O'Grady intended, that's for sure.