The Sorrow of Haiti

[callady]

The Sorrow of Haiti

Saturday 15th October 2005, by Stephen J. Lendman

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With the U.S already stretched beyond its capacity in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere and currently condemned worldwide for flouting international law, inviolable Geneva Conventions it’s a signatory to, and our own sacred Bill of Rights, why now Haiti. The country is very small , has a population of about 7.5 million and is the poorest country in the Americas. Why did the U.S. intervene with so much else on its plate? Think back to the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 when the U.S. asserted its exclusive right to dominate the Americas. Now update to the present and a reinterpretation of that Doctrine has arrogantly expanded to cover the entire planet - and outer space. Think of it, the U.S. will tolerate no rival and has now staked its claim to dominate all other nations and the oceans and the heavens. In an inversion or perversion of Woody Guthrie’s great song for the people - "This Land Is Your Land" - a fitting anthem for U.S. arrogance might be "This Earth is My Earth....this earth was made and now belongs to the U.S.A." That includes Haiti, and sadly for its people that tiny, poor country lies much too close to the U.S. The lament and aphorism of Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz who said......"Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the U.S." is also true for Haiti and all other countries in the region as well.

The February, 2004 U.S. invasion was only its latest incursion into that poor and defenseless country. The U.S. did it before in 1915, stayed for 19 years, and caused extreme human suffering and death to the Haitian people. It also did it in 1994, stayed for 5 years, reinstated an overwhelmingly democratically elected President, and then made it impossible for him to govern effectively and be able to serve the interests of the Haitian people, especially after the 2000 parliamentary election which was contested over a handful of parliamentary seats. After the opposition cried foul, the Inter-American Development Bank froze desperately needed loans which were never reinstated for the rest of Aristide’s tenure. The IDB also forced the Haitian government to commit to the onerous burden of repaying and servicing past "odious" debt. The debt burden was so great that in 2003 Haiti was forced to send 90% of its foreign reserves to Washington to pay it.

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It first began when the early settlers took native Indian land through force or chicanery and murdered many millions in the process. As the colonies grew, expansion spread west and south and by the 1840s became a policy called "Manifest Destiny" to promote and justify a strategy and practice of ruthless predatory expansion to include all territory south of Canada, coast to coast, as well as the annexation of Texas and conquest and seizure of half of Mexico. In the Guadalupe-Hidalgo peace treaty with Mexico in 1848, the U.S. "graciously" allowed Mexico to keep half its country

Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt continued U.S. imperial adventures and expansion annexing Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Wake Island, Guam, and American Samoa after the war with Spain. The Canal Zone was taken a few years later, and after many more years of savage and bloody war, killing somewhere between 1/4 to 1/2 million or more , the Philippines finally succumbed and became a U.S. colony. The imperial tradition continued throughout the 20th century, especially after WW II when the U.S. was the only powerful nation left unscathed from the ravages of that brutal war. It took full advantage creating and exploiting the myth of "communist barbarians" at our gates . After the Soviet Union collapsed, we desperately needed a new threat but had no problem finding many - Manuel Noriega in Panama, Saddam in Iraq, the North Koreans, Columbian drug lords, Fidel, the Iranian Ayatollahs, Hugo Chavez and anyone else we choose, the only qualification being a head of state unwilling to serve U.S. interests. Jean-Bertrand Aristide tried and failed to do it both ways - to follow U.S. dictates as well as serve his own people as best he could including raising Haiti’s appallingly low minimum wage, disbanding its notoriously brutal military and having the courage to sue France for reimbursement for that country’s 19th century imposed indemnity Aristide now estimated to be $21 billion adjusted for inflation and with 5% compound interest. All that and more was intolerable for the U.S., so he had to go. Before discussing events and conditions in Haiti today after the coup, let’s go back to the beginning to examine the plight of the Haitian people from the time the Spanish first arrived in 1492.

http://www.selvesandothers.org/article11819.html

[BayCityProgressive]

1. The US

Would rather slaughter every living person in haiti than allow another "bad example" like Cuba in the Western Hemisphere.

[Name removed]

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