Former Ally's Shift in Stance Left Haiti Leader No Recourse

Former Ally's Shift in Stance Left Haiti Leader No Recourse
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17889-2004Feb29.html
By Peter Slevin and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, March 1, 2004; Page A01

After days of increasingly intense U.S. pressure on him to resign, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide ran out of bluster late Saturday. He sent an emissary to U.S. Ambassador James Foley with a series of questions at once urgent and plaintive.

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U.S. efforts, combined with the work of allies, winched Aristide from office, but criticism that started before Aristide's departure grew yesterday as Haiti continued its descent into chaos. A central question was whether the Bush administration should have acted sooner and more decisively.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus accused the Bush administration of sacrificing democracy by refusing to support Aristide. Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) said Bush should have dispatched troops earlier to stop the violence. Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) described Bush as "late, as usual."

---snip---

By Wednesday, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin called for Aristide's resignation. A State Department official said Powell reached the same conclusion. He called on Aristide the next day to "examine his position carefully" and do what was best for Haiti.

The administration did not want to be seen forcing out a democratically elected leader, yet it wanted to take no steps to help him continue his autocratic ways. Bush said the United States would support an international security "presence" if a political solution was reached.

EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

But was anyone gonna believe the act in the first place? Of course he left because the US wanted him gone. Of course.

I guess they really did want him gone...

And where is he now?

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"A White House official said Aristide's resignation was a constitutional result with domestic roots." - As if any constitution says "in the event of foreign troops expelling the president at gunpoint, the supreme court judge will named president."

(snip)........... It wasn't until February 15 that the NYT's own reporter, Lydia Polgreen bothered to mention that the group marching on Gonaïves known a the Cannibal Army was led by "sinister figures from past," including the infamous Louis-Jodel Chamblain, a soldier who led death squads in the 1980s through the mid-1990s and was convicted in absentia for his involvement in the murder of Antoine Izméry, a well-known pro-democracy activist. Also unexplored by the same reporters were reports that the groups terrorizing Gonaïves had come from across the border, from the Dominican Republic. Given this knowledge, it is curious that no reporter then bothered to inquire how these groups obtained ample caches of brand-new M-16s, M-60s, armor piercing weapons, all-terrain vehicles, and rocket-propelled grenade launchers-equipment far beyond the reach of the Haiti's own impecunious security forces.

Was the story too dangerous to investigate? Was the situation indecipherable? Was the prospect of a weak regime giving way to another in the hemisphere's poorest country just not a story worth the time and effort? The tragedy of this episode is that much of it was abundantly transparent. Running a sixty-second web search on any of the principals involved leads one to a fetid two-decade history of CIA and U.S. ultra-right subterfuge in Haiti. The fact that the group in charge of Haiti policy today in the State Department has been literally gunning for Aristide since before his initial election as a champion of democracy in 1990 has been left all but unmentioned by the press. Also forgotten is the fact that members of the armed groups burning their way through Haiti's cities today include groups that, (according to myriad sources including sworn testimony before Congress by U.S. officials, reporters, and reports of Haitian recipients of covert aid,) were funneling drugs to the U.S. while in the pay of U.S. intelligence agents.

The point is not that the public has been lied to by the government. Governments lie, particularly this administration. The point is that even those on the left who are indignant about systematic misinformation elsewhere have not bothered to jog their memories on Haiti to smell the sulfur emanating from this episode,. The press apparatus reporting on the Caribbean is either too broken or too racist to remember that Haiti's anguish is connected to forces quite beyond poor judgment or even bad will by President Aristide. The ease with which armed thugs have upended a civilian regime, eliciting only murmurs of disquiet from onlookers abroad who ought to know better is cause for worry. Surely zealots in charge of U.S. foreign policy have taken note. If it's this easy to destabilize Haiti , Cuba will unquestionably appear a more viable target for direct intervention in the not-so-distant future.
(snip/...)

http://www.counterpunch.org/williams03012004.html