Amy Wilentz on Haiti
posted
to www.marxmail.org on March 2, 2004
(This article appears all the more rancid after the way
things have turned out in Haiti.
Wilentz is a Columbia
University journalism professor who
epitomizes everything that is bad about the Nation Magazine. With its
combination of disgusting politics and a highly polished writing style, the
article provides an experience not unlike eating a glazed donut stuffed with
dog feces. The entire article is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040301&s=wilentz.
I am commenting on selected passages.)
Haiti's
Collapse by Amy Wilentz
The Aristide administration, which has been overthrown once
already, has been egalitarian in the lives destroyed during its time: Among its
dead can be counted the president's former friends and his foes, democrats and
supporters of dictatorship. Among the victims have been policemen and prisoners
and politicians; rich men and poor, journalists and slum-dwellers, human-rights
workers and doctors and businessmen. Almost no sector has been untouched.
COMMENT: So what "dead" are we talking about? Did
Aristide sponsor death squads? How were lives destroyed? You'll note the utter
lack of substantiation. I guess that the Nation Magazine (and Bad Subjects)
both cannot be bothered by mundane questions of fact-checking.
WILENTZ: No one can argue that Jean-Bertrand Aristide's
presidency has been in any way successful other than this: It exists. He was
elected in 1990 with enormous hope by an overwhelming majority in a legitimate election--and
quickly overthrown by the Haitian Army and its friends. In 1994 he was returned
to power through the good will of the Clinton Administration, in the optimistic
expectation that he would be able to turn Haiti
around.
COMMENT: The "good will of the Clinton Administration"?
This is typical double-talk from this Yellow Dog
Democrat magazine. Clinton
intervened in Haiti
in 1994 because there was A REFUGEE CRISIS. If boat people fleeing Haiti
were not flooding the shores of Florida,
he wouldn't have lifted a finger. As it is, his measures could hardly be
described as "good will", as Patrick Cockburn reported in the Sept.
15th The Independent:
The US pursued a contradictory policy. Restore Fr
Aristide but clip his wings. Put him back in the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince but keep the military as a balance. It
might have worked but it was based on a fundamental error: the Haitian military
was not prepared to share power, particularly as they thought the US would pull its punches at the last minute.
General Cedras and Colonel Michel Francois are both graduates of Fort Benning in the US. They had close links with the CIA. They
knew Washington was deeply divided. But they were prepared
to talk.
The first phase of Mr Clinton's foreign policy on Haiti was orchestrated by his special envoy, Lawrence Pezzullo, and the
UN and OAS special envoy, Dante Caputo, a former Argentinian
foreign minister. Sanctions had been imposed after the coup in 1991. In June
1992 they were reinforced to include oil and arms. Pressure was put on Fr
Aristide, now based in Washington, to offer the military a compromise solution. Ian Martin, a Haitian
specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote: ''The United States hoped to preserve the military - an institution
it had often assisted and, in fact, had created for purposes of internal
control during the American occupation of 1915-34.''
If this has anything to do with "good will", I'll
vote for Kerry in 2004.
WILENTZ: Meanwhile, the Haitian opposition has been coddled
and pushed toward the depths of intransigence by Aristide's detractors in the US
government, in both Haiti
and in Washington. By now, with
the country well on its way to chaos, many argue that Aristide has exhausted
the electorate's patience and must be replaced.
COMMENT: This is a trick they must teach at Columbia
University's School
of Journalism. By stating
"many argue", you avoid the need to specify who or what you are talking
about. It is the preferred form of indirection employed in NY Times editorials
and other weasel forums. (No offense meant to these good animals.)
WILENTZ: Yet now--as he finally begins to recognize how
powerful the opposition has become despite all his political jockeying and playacting--should
be the time for all friends of Haiti, especially in the US government, to
support Aristide's continuation at the helm: not because he is good but because
he is president. Aristide is a transitional figure and not the best of these.
He is no Mandela, and he does not have the political maturity to control the
violent forces that swirl through Haitian politics--no easy job.
COMMENT: He lacks the "political maturity"? I guess
he is not a real grown-up like Bill Clinton. I suppose
black men have a lot of growing up to do before they can become chief
executives. More to the point, what fucking business is it of "friends of Haiti"
in the US
government to have a say in who governs this country, either one way or
another. When you accept Bill Clinton's right to interfere in Haiti's
internal affairs on a "good will" basis, the door is also opened to
George W. Bush's more openly hostile meddling. Thus, humanitarian interventions
become the "soft cop" brother to the "hard cop" regime
changes.
WILENTZ: Yet the future of Haiti
hinges on support for institutions and for a state based on law. As part of the
unrest, a gang element managed to take over Gonaïves,
one of Haiti's
largest cities--a ramshackle affair of shantytowns and gingerbread houses atop
salt flats and roads made undrivable by potholes,
with few enough institutions as it is. This gang, which
styles itself the Cannibal Army or, in its latest incarnation, the Artibonite Resistance Front (perhaps more palatable to the
international community), has burned down the courthouse and the prison in Gonaïves, released the prison population and forced the
mayor to flee. Though there may be elaborate and in some cases good excuses
for these actions, taken as a trend they do not bode well for the rule of law.
COMMENT: I'd love to hear what "good excuses"
there are for any actions by something calling itself
"the Cannibal Army". But then again, the Nation Magazine is highly
skilled at making the unpalatable palatable.