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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (125490)	3/3/2004 12:54:50 AM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi Jacob Snyder; Re: "Any leader of any little nation, if he isn't going to do exactly as Washington instructs, had better make sure he has a loyal army at his back." Aristide's problem was in (a) dissolving the military without building up a new military to protect the government, and (b) pissing off the wealthier people in the country. As far as I know, there are zero examples of stable governments which rule over populations where the wealthy people are unhappy. If the rich are unhappy, so is everyone else. Bush yanking Aristide out of the country probably saved his life, and definitely saved the lives of a lot of Haitians. By all rights, Bush (and Chirac) should be lauded for getting involved in Haiti with such grace and precision. Aristide had already lost the majority of the country. The rebels were moving steadily forward. The end was so near that Aristide had already moved his family out of the country. His was a dying regime, not a healthy democracy. And his previous election was widely known to be faked: Clinton urges Aristide to resolve Haiti's electoral impasse ... Charging fraud, all major opposition parties boycotted the presidential election, which Aristide had been expected to win regardless. But there was a low turnout and alleged stuffing of ballot boxes which has the opposition challenging Aristide's mandate. The U.S. State Department said turnout was "low" and independent Haitian radio stations reported a small minority of Haitians voted. But the electoral council, which opposition parties charge is loaded with Aristide supporters, claimed 60.5 percent voted. The head of a Caribbean Community monitoring mission, former St. Lucia Premier John Compton, put turnout at 15-20 percent. ... Last week, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan recommended closing the mission, saying it was useless considering the government's questionable legitimacy. CNN.com, December 7, 2000 cnn.com The people who say that Bush didn't have international backing to go into Haiti are correct, but the situation is not at all similar to Iraq in that in Haiti, the demand to act was pressing. It was time to act. Rather than look at the absence of international support, one should look instead at the absence of international complaints. Even the French not only agreed with the invasion, but participated in it. I think you're looking at Haiti through excessively politically polarized glasses. Any US president would have done something similar to what Bush just did in Haiti. -- Carl