Haiti is a prison ruled by psychopaths,
an angry wound in the body of the African Diaspora inflicted by pirates
at war with civilization, itself. It is the festering evidence of
the Bush men’s true intentions for the region and hemisphere, a nightmare
and a warning from the North to the South: don’t even pretend that
you are free.
Since February 29, when the United States
and France forced President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his wife into
an odyssey of exile, Haiti has endured the dictatorship of an elite
so tiny and morally depraved that its survival is dependent on indigenous
criminals and foreign soldiers. The U.S.-installed government of
Gerard Latortue – a rabble fronting for butchers and thieves – now
seeks legitimacy in the ranks of the Caribbean Community, Caricom,
the 15-nation regional body from which Latortue recklessly withdrew
in the aftermath of the coup.
At a summit meeting this week in Grenada, Caricom’s leaders withheld
recognition of the Haitian Gangster
State, opting instead to
send a delegation to
explore restoration of relations in the future. According to reports earlier in the week, Belize, Antigua
and Barbuda, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada and the Bahamas pressed for
immediate recognition of Latortue’s regime, while a smaller bloc, led
by St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Ralf
Gonsalves,
sought to ostracize the U.S. puppet.
"The Heads or no group of Heads can go and meet Latortue, and,
if they go, they would not be representing me," said Gonsalves. "Latortue
was installed by the Americans, you do not have democracy in Haiti
today and there is no level playing field, therefore whoever wants
to recognize Haiti can, but the Government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines
will not recognize the Latortue administration."
The final compromise calls for Haitian readmission to Caricom based
on certain “conditionalities,” including an early return to a
constitutional government in Haiti, establishment of a bi-partisan
electoral council for competitive local, national and presidential
elections, and the disarming of armed bands.
Every Caribbean leader knows that the Latortue regime cannot possibly
adhere to such conditions, since it is in a state of war with the majority
of Haiti’s people – the mass constituency that chose Aristide as their
President under the Lavalas party umbrella. Caricom’s face-saving formula
seeks to preserve the dignity of the organization while allowing member
states to attempt to make their peace with the United States – the
overwhelming presence at the Grenada meeting. Jamaican Prime Minister
P..J. Patterson was ready to compromise, having borne the full fury
of U.S. wrath at his decision to temporarily harbor Aristide after
his release from the Central African Republic.
There will be many such “compromises” – and, undoubtedly, a host of
outright betrayals – as the hemisphere and the world wrestles with
the great question of the age: How can nations, or combinations of
nations, preserve the integrity of international law in the face of
a superpower that is intent on subordination or outright destruction
of the existing world order? In this context, the tiny, super-vulnerable
nations of the Caribbean may have shown as much collective spine as
can reasonably be expected.
Latinos bearing guns
In the estimation of Stan Goff and many other opponents of U.S. imperialism,
the leftist governments of Argentina, Brazil and Chile have stepped
over the line into “grotesque betrayal and unabashed political opportunism” by
taking on UN “peacekeeping” duties in Haiti. (See “ABC
of Opportunism,” Counterpunch,
July 3.) As Goff points out, all three of these nations were themselves
victimized by American-backed military coups:
Has Argentina's [President Nestor Carlos] Kirchner
forgotten the US's supportive role during the Dirty War? Has Chile's
[President Ricardo] Lagos forgotten 1973 and the CIA attack on Chilean
popular sovereignty? And has Brazil's [President Lula] da Silva
developed amnesia with regard to [President Joao] Goulart's ouster at the hands of the same
CIA in 1964?
The Brazil-led UN force took over Haiti
occupation duties from a U.S.-led “multinational” force,
late last month, with a Security Council mandate to “encourage” disarmament
of armed groups in preparation for elections in 2005. Haitians
cannot be
faulted for believing that only the accents of the occupiers have
changed. There is no question that, by replacing U.S., Canadian
and French troops, the Latin American presence has the effect of “sanctioning the
controversial foreign intervention in which former Haitian President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide was removed from power,” wrote Emir
Sader in the current issue of Foreign Policy In Focus. However,
Brazil sees the issue differently, perceiving its UN mission as
one that strengthens international order and the rule of law. From
President Lula da Silva’s perspective, Brazil’s mission in Haiti
represents opposition to American unilateralism.
Not coincidentally,
da Silva believes that his eagerness to participate in the occupation
of Haiti enhances Brazil’s candidacy for a permanent spot on the
UN Security Council – which in turn, by this line of reasoning,
advances the goal of a multi-polar world in which large developing
nations like Brazil, South Africa, India and China act as counterbalances
to North American and European power.
Such rationalizations
do the Haitian people no good at all, but must be expected and
understood as the inevitable result of the contradictions into
which the Bush Pirates have plunged the planet. When the Americans threaten to make the UN irrelevant (in
Bush pal Richard Perle’s words, “perhaps
we can dispense with the UN altogether”), nations
fearful for the future of international order become eager to engage
the world body as an alternative to “unregulated” U.S. aggression.
Thus, the United Nations gave cover to a decade of U.S. and British
aerial aggression against Iraq, and offered its good offices to
the farcical “transfer” of power to the “new” puppet regime in
Baghdad – all in the interest of staying in “the game.” To preserve
the appearance of the rule of law, the UN stoops to legalizing
lawlessness.
Secretary General Kofi Annan’s lap dog behavior – a repertoire
that features a “roll over” so predictable you can set your watch
by it – is a calculated defense of the institutional United
Nations. The UN has been Annan’s “home” for more than 40
years; he is a “citizen” of a vast, global bureaucracy whose primary
mission is to preserve itself. When resistance to the superpower
might endanger the institution, the UN seeks a niche alongside
the superpower – and calls it international order.
Brazil, Argentina and Chile followed the same map to Haiti.
As long as there exists no web of international relations that
can function effectively without the cooperation of the United
States, nations will justify their lack of solidarity with the
victims of U.S. aggression by waving the UN flag.
In Haiti’s case, UN bureaucrats speak of decades of international
stewardship over the country, as if it were a toddler nation, rather
than the second republic to emerge in the western hemisphere. Better
to “adopt” the child than leave it to its own devices, or to the
tender mercies of its abusive neighbors. So goes the self-serving
rationalization, with hardly a nod to the UN’s own principles of
national sovereignty and self-determination.
Thugs and
thieves
Like stunted sorcerer’s apprentices, the de facto rulers in Port-au-Prince
mimic their masters in Washington, pretending that deposed Prime
Minister Yvon Neptune is Haiti’s Saddam Hussein. Neptune went underground
in March to escape assassination by the “freedom fighters” who are
the muscle for Gerard Latortue’s regime. In May, while still in hiding,
Neptune wrote an Open Letter to the U.S.-led occupiers of his country,
the Organization of American States (OAS), Caricom, and the UN:
“The Multinational Force will soon put an end to its mission,
it will be replaced by a United Nations Force. I wish that
neither will have been a tool put in the hands of the present Government,
the group 184 and other coalitions of die-hard anti-Lavalas sectors
to chase away, isolate or destroy those who share the yearning
and the difficult and painful struggle of the impoverished majority
to move forward with the process of building an inclusive and equitable
socio-economic system for the benefit of all.
”I am convinced that the historically violated, exploited, deceived
and repressed people of Haiti have the intelligence and wisdom
to create, identify and seize true opportunities of stability,
peace and improvement of their living conditions.”
Neptune was arrested by Latortue’s police on June 27, shortly after
coming out of hiding. He faces trial by the equivalent of an Al Capone
court. The prime minister’s imprisonment, said former Aristide spokesman
Mario Dupuy, "confirms, for those who still had doubts, the
hideous and revolting character of this tropical fascism."
An estimated 3,000 Haitians have
been murdered by Latortue’s thugs since the U.S.-engineered coup
of February 29.
The United Nations
will not bring justice to Haiti, so long as it can otherwise busy
itself. Even “progressive” Latin American states have demonstrated
that the “big picture” in their heads does not include Haiti’s
8 million people. Nor can Haitians expect their Caricom neighbors
to risk their own sovereignty in the quest for a free Haiti. Should
he win the presidency, John Kerry will not lift a finger on his
own initiative to return President Aristide from South African
exile. Yet it is also certain that the buffoonish Latortue regime,
representing a small and flight-prone elite, cannot impose its
cruel discipline on the great bulk of the population for long.
"If they want to kill all of us that's OK,
but we will not rest until Aristide is back," said Lesly Gustave,
an organizer of a 5,000-strong Lavalas demonstration in Port-au-Prince,
in mid-June.
We smell an
uprising.
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