Tuesday, March 09, 2004
(9:58 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Remarks on Haiti
The Economist had a story the other day (link via Political Theory Daily Review) in which it was asked whether America would "finish the job." I brought this to Ted's class today for our "News from the Empire" segment, but since someone else had already mentioned a Haiti story, I just let the moment pass. There are a few points I need to address, however:
When the Americans last intervened in Haiti, to put Mr Aristide back into the presidency in 1994, they had had the three years since his overthrow in which to construct a blueprint. In the event, the blueprint was more or less consigned, by events on the ground and by America's early withdrawal, to the dustbin. This time, policy is having to be invented, on the run.
The intent, at least, is good. James Foley, America's ambassador, promised Haitians that the international community would “fill the void” and that, this time, outsiders would not “walk away from Haiti before the job was completed.” He added, even more unconvincingly, that “the whole world is united to help Haiti.”
What "job" are we talking about here? I must read on, to get clues:
It seems sadly unlikely, with the extra twist that the world is led by a government bogged down in Iraq, with a beady eye on November's election, and divided over Haiti. As with Iraq, America's Defence Department and State Department do not always agree. On March 2nd Defence officials said that the 1,500-2,000 marines in their 90-day stay in Haiti would of course try to restore order, but would not, they stressed, act as the new cop on the beat.
[...]
As soon as they had secured the perimeter of the airport, [the commander of the first American forces to arrive] said, they would begin moving into the city “to secure key government installations”. But, following the Defence Department line, he stressed that he had no instructions for dealing with the rebels. “That's a Haitian problem,” he said. “We are not a police force.” Looting continued under the Americans' eyes, as did the rebels' progress.
From what I can gather, the goal is to put together some slapped-together, unworkable temporary solution that will necessitate America getting involved again in a decade or so. It's almost as if the army is trained to leave countries in a state of near-total chaos with a weak, barely legitimate government, which will end up being either completely impotent or completely tyrannical -- it happens so often, in virtually every country we count among our allies, that you start to wonder if they're doing it on purpose.
Mr Aristide's exit was cleverly, if cynically, finessed. Although some critics are alleging that he was kidnapped by the Americans, and thrown on a plane, his removal was more like slow death by strangulation. Despite the pressure from American hawks to dispatch him post haste, Colin Powell, the secretary of state, was concerned to avoid direct American complicity in a coup. He also had to take into account the Caribbean leaders who were calling for swift international military intervention to protect Mr Aristide and Haiti's democratic order.
American officials were reasonably confident that Mr Aristide could be outmanoevred. And, indeed, he was, in the end, the author of his own downfall. Last week, his dreaded enforcers, the street gangs of angry young men and boys known as chimères, began a campaign of terror in the streets of the capital. By the middle of the week, bodies of opposition activists were lying about, some killed by “execution”. Opposition businesses and radio stations were targeted for attacks.
But Mr Aristide's doom was sealed on February 27th when the chimères began intimidating repatriated boat people. If there was anything the Bush administration was not going to stand it was an interruption, especially in the months before the election, of its policy of sending home intercepted Haitian boat people.
When illegal immigration makes economic sense, then we can talk about temporary amnesty. When illegal immigration is about poor people sailing on the open sea in order to escape an ongoing civil war, we send them home. I'm not trying to blame Bush in specific for this -- Democrats and Republicans alike have turned a blind eye to people who desperately needed refuge. Next time we're congratulating ourselves for defeating Nazi Germany, we might want to take a look at the stats on how many Jewish refugees were allowed into our country during the initial years of Nazi rule. For example. Now we're becoming involved in this war, of all the wars that are going on, at least partly to stop poor people from entering our country. As Badiou points out, when unemployment is high, hospitality is out of the question.
