U.s.-sponsored Regime Change In Haiti

[multi]

March 1, 2004 - In the wee hours of March 1, US Marines landed in Haiti hours after

President Jean-Bertrand Aristide reportedly succumbed to demands from an

armed opposition movement that he step down and go into exile--although

persistent rumors on the ground maintain he was actually arrested by US

forces. As rebel troops entered the capital Port-au-Prince, the UN

Security

Council approved a resolution authorizing a multinational force to restore

order, and French troops are also on the way.



The rebel army, hobbled together from anti-government gangs and militias

and led by former army officers, has achieved its aim of Aristide's

ouster. It seems the cost will be the loss of Haiti's sovereignty to foreign

occupation troops--yet again..



Cycles of Destabilization



This overthrow had been in the making since December 1990, when Haiti's

first free election was held. The winning candidate, with two-thirds

majority, was the populist priest Aristide, backed by a vigorous

grassroots movement known as Lavalas. But seven months later, Aristide's government

was overthrown in a military coup. No government on earth recognized the

military junta, but as Noam Chomsky noted: "Washington maintained close

intelligence and military ties with the new rulers while undermining the

embargo called by the Organization of American States, even authorizing

illegal shipments of oil to the regime and its wealthy supporters."

more..

whitehouse denies he was kidnapped..but from what i just heard his lawyer say in an interview..it sounded like he was..

[span]

i know Aristide has become some kind of hero for the left but in all honesty he was a piece of shit and the US saved him from being done in Ceausescu style by his own people.

[Mazer]

I've been paying a little attention to this story, so I don't know much. However I did see a video clip showing a civilian 757 airliner flying him off the island. And the Prime Minister of Haiti maintains that Aristide resigned, having read aloud the letter he left behind for him. Maybe he was escorted to the plain and wrote that letter under duress, but even an ouster of the President cannot be equated with a regime change because he was elected democratically, and now the people of Haiti will (or at least should) elect a new president. Like span says, we were trying to prevent bloodshed and now we're being accused of interfering in an other nation's soverignty. I call BS to that.

[span]

Originally posted by Mazer
I've been paying a little attention to this story, so I don't know much. However I did see a video clip showing a civilian 757 airliner flying him off the island. And the Prime Minister of Haiti maintains that Aristide resigned, having read aloud the letter he left behind for him. Maybe he was escorted to the plain and wrote that letter under duress, but even an ouster of the President cannot be equated with a regime change because he was elected democratically, and now the people of Haiti will (or at least should) elect a new president. Like span says, we were trying to prevent bloodshed and now we're being accused of interfering in an other nation's soverignty. I call BS to that.

you really need to go look at independent reviews of Haiti's 2000 election before you say Aristide was "democratically elected". It's pretty much a consensus of everyone that reviewed it that it was a sham.

[Mazer]

A sham yes, I stand corrected, but was it a regime?

[span]

i think they'd be closer to a junta

[floydian slip]

Originally posted by span
you really need to go look at independent reviews of America's 2000 election before you say Bush was "democratically elected". It's pretty much a consensus of everyone that reviewed it that it was a sham.

agreed

[span]

Originally posted by floydian slip
agreed

moveON

[tambourine-man]

An oldie, but a goodie...

Bush's Hotmail account

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"Will I resign? No, I will not resign, I will fulfill my term and I will not allow criminals and terrorists to take over."

Jean-Bertrand Aristide

This long-simmering crisis is largely of Mr. Aristide's making. His failure to adhere to democratic principles has contributed to the deep polarization and violent unrest that we are witnessing in Haiti today." Press Secretary, Scott McClellan

The Bush Administration's response to the rebellion in Haiti is the most explicit example of contempt for democracy we've seen yet. The United States has had 2000 Marines ready for immediate deployment to the beleaguered island, but has held back until Haiti's "first democratically elected President" was spirited out of the country by force of arms. It is currently being reported by the BBC that Mr. Aristide was escorted to the plane in which he made his dawn escape by US Marines already in the country. This only adds to the suspicion of US complicity in the President's ouster.

Aristide pleaded for help from the international community, and particularly the United States, saying that perhaps only a few dozen marines could salvage his presidency. The US flatly refused, condemning the Aristide government to certain collapse. The culpability for that collapse resides entirely with the Bush Administration.

We cannot imagine what conclusions are being drawn by the various leaders in the Middle East who are now being presented with Mr. Bush's Greater Middle East Initiative (GME). They are being asked to launch democratic reforms in their own countries while at the same time, witnessing the flagrant duplicity of the Administration's actions in Haiti. Are we to believe that Bush and co. have a genuine interest in democracy when then they refuse to even lift a finger to help a struggling neighbor in their own back yard? Instead, they issue a steady stream of criticism at the elected government (via the media) which further emboldens the rebel leaders to continue their onslaught.

Things really started going downhill for the Aristide Government when the Bush Administration began their well-calculated attack on its legitimacy. As Scott McClellan said, "Aristide's actions have called into question his fitness to continue to govern."

Really? Then who should govern, if not the man who was elected by over 80% of the Haitian population? Not every country accepts the idea that the Supreme Court should decide elections. Some nations still entertain the archaic notion that the president should be chosen by popular mandate, a view that has been regrettably abandoned in the US. The action taken in Haiti is an affront to the basic principle of representative government.

Statements like McClellan's this made it abundantly clear to everyone that Bush supported the overthrow of Aristide by the dubious gang of terrorists and misfits who instigated the coup. As ex-ambassador Richard Holbrook opined, they are nothing more than "murderers, drug-lords and criminals." Holbrook added that, "Bush had pulled the plug on Aristide and must accept responsibility" for what happens now.

As Democracy Now reported earlier this week, "Many of the men leading the armed insurrection in Haiti right now are well known to veteran Haiti observers and, for that matter, the US intelligence agencies that worked closely with the paramilitary death squads which terrorized Haiti in the early 1990s. People like Louis Jodel Chamblain, the former number 2 man in FRAPH, Guy Philippe, a former police chief who was trained by US Special forces in Ecuador and Jean Tatun, another leader of FRAPH."

"The question is, will the international community stand by and allow a democracy in this hemisphere to be terminated by a brutal military coup of persons who have a very, very sordid history of gross violations of human rights?" (Democracy Now)

Ira Kurzban, the Miami-based attorney who has served as General Counsel to the Haitian government since 1991, said that the paramilitaries fighting to overthrow Aristide are being backed by Washington.

"I believe that this is a group that is armed by, trained by, and employed by the intelligence services of the United States. This is clearly a military operation, and it's a military coup." (Democracy Now)

"There are enough indications from our point of view, at least from my point of view, that the United States certainly knew what was coming about two weeks before this military operation started," Kurzban said. "The United States made contingency plans for Guantanamo." (Democracy Now)

"All of the men were trained in Ecuador by US Special Forces during the 1991-1994 coup....Because it is a military operation. It's not a rag-tag group of liberators, as has often been put in the press in the last week or two." (Democracy Now)

So, why has the Bush Administration decided to rid itself of the Aristide Government?

Aristide has always sought to address the crushing poverty and hunger of his countrymen. After following the "free trade" dictates issuing from Washington during the 1980's, Haiti's domestic rice production was in shambles. US subsidies to American farmers left "a hungry nation even hungrier."

Aristide knew that "we could either enter the global economic system, in which we cannot survive, or, refuse, and face death by slow starvation." This is the same dire situation that faces many third world countries. For them, free trade is not so free.

International donors to poorer countries base their loans on a neoliberal economic plan; lower tariffs, tight monetary control and privatization. These oftentimes have a devastating affect on fragile economies.

As Aristide said, "we wanted to guard against a quick total sale of state assets." This is what the IMF required to guarantee the needed loans. When Aristide balked on the sale of state owned cement and flour plants, the hammer came down. The IMF threatened "cutting off all funds to Haiti. The international media followed suit with a frenzy of condemnation and character assassination."

This is a familiar pattern for the leaders of countries who try to resist the seizure of their most valuable resources and assets from outside corporations.

And, this is essentially how Aristide fell from grace with the Bush administration. He refused to comply with the economic regimen that forces poor countries to deepen their poverty and surrender their assets. He defied the highway robbery that disguises itself as "free trade", but only offers more suffering and grief.

As we can see, he paid for his defiance.

Make no mistake; this form of despotism is now backed by the full force of the United States Military, the gendarmes of the new economic order.

Aristide is just the latest victim.

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