HaitiUnder U.S.Tutelage and Control
• It’s a win for Secretary of State Powell’s confused, contradictory and hypocritical policy, but does it advance
authentic U.S. national interests?
• Powell’s vision for Latin America is now indistinguishable from that of his junior hemispheric policymaking
ideologues, Noriega and Reich. The battle for the Secretary of State’s soul has ended in a rout for those who had highly
regarded the man they thought he was, in contrast to the man he turned out to be.
• The conflagration on the island hasn’t ended; it will continue to burn down the country’s constitutional structure and
eat away at what small chance Haiti had to evolve into a stable democratic society.
• Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Jamaica, the U.S., the OAS, CARICOM, the UN and Haiti – heroes and trimmers.
Less through confusion than by design, by belatedly introducing this country’s and other foreign forces into Haiti,
Washington has guaranteed that Haiti’s now deeply scarred society is unlikely to easily recuperate from the wounds
inflicted on it by an array of villains, both foreign and domestic. While many in both of those categories are destined
to face the scrutiny of objective critics in the months and years to come, none of their reputations are more likely to
be tarnished by the role that they played in bringing down President Aristide’s constitutional rule, than Secretary of
State Colin Powell. In effect, he willingly became the captive of the Bush administration’s obsessive right-wing
ideologues—the fateful sons of former Senator Jesse Helms—led by Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega, Deputy
Assistant Secretary Dan Fisk, and White House aide Otto Reich.
First there were Powell’s earlier and highly criticized efforts to assure the American public of the reliability of what
turned out to be either fake or exaggerated intelligence findings regarding the intent and capacity of Saddam Hussein to
resort to weapons of mass destruction, which provided the justification for Washington’s controversial decision to go to
war against Iraq. Now we have just witnessed the extraordinary shifts and duplicity of what only charitably can be
described as Powell’s Haitian diplomacy. His behavior has destroyed any illusion that the Secretary of State could be
relied upon to control the two changeling political appointees who had been pushed upon him by Miami’s clout with the
White House- Noriega and Reich. In the end, Powell’s already fading reputation for moderation was not to be found when
it came to Haiti.
Powell’s End Game
Powell’s Haitian policy was dazzlingly inept. Recalling that only days before Aristide was put on a plane on February 29
for his flight into exile in the Central African Republic, which the State Department had ordered and arranged, the
Secretary was repeatedly acknowledging the legitimacy of Aristide’s rule and denouncing the “thugs” making up the
violent opposition, insisting that they would not be allowed to shoot their way to power, nor would Aristide be asked to
resign. Once becoming more engaged, Powell began insisting that the anti-Aristide political opposition must negotiate
with the government and that Washington would not sanction regime change or insist upon Aristide’s forced ouster. Then,
scarcely twenty-four hours before Aristide’s induced flight, Powell reversed himself by ignoring Haiti’s constitution,
which stipulates that a president can only convey his resignation to the country’s legislature, and not to Washington’s
self-denominated viceroy, in implementing the script to abduct Aristide.
If Powell really meant his words at the time, then why didn’t he stick by them, since Aristide had done nothing to
justify this 100 percent reversal in the U.S. stand. While Powell’s rhetoric at the time appeared to represent the high
road on the issue, he continuously was being undermined by Noriega and Reich in their off-the-record briefings to
journalists and other interest parties. In contrast to Powell’s line, these press sessions implied that regime change
was very much an option, and that Aristide could be muscled aside in any negotiation process.
Less than Meets the Eye
All along, when it came to Haiti, Powell’s defense of democracy was more apparent than real. To begin, the U.S. embassy
in Port-Au-Prince was rarely a passive bystander to Haiti’s ongoing violence. In effect, Ambassador Foley, just as was
the case with his recent predecessors at the Port-au-Prince post, saw his embassy as Fort Apache, and that the local
restless Indians had to be kept in place through the use of an agile and an exceedingly active embassy playmaker who
would call the shots that would determine Haiti’s ultimate fate. The cumulative result was that the space left to
President Aristide to publicly function continued to atrophy until last month, when his position had become all but
untenable.
Just as in Venezuela two years ago, where a failed coup had been hatched against President Hugo Chavez thanks to the
political backing and covert funding provided by the then chief U.S.regional policy maker, Otto Reich, a markedly
similar scenario has just been witnessed in Haiti. This approach represented an almost farcical evasion of hemispheric
obligations on the part of U.S. coup plotters, in order to provide legal cover for their patently illegal actions.
In an indisputable contravention of its O.A.S. responsibilities under resolutions signed by the U.S. over the past
decade in Santiago and Lima, which were aimed at mandating democratic legitimacy throughout the hemisphere, the U.S.
turned out to be the lead co-conspirator in planting a hatchet in Haiti’s civil society. This was the culmination of its
long-sought foreign policy goal of either eliminating or bypassing Aristide and somehow voiding his inconvenient but
undeniable democratic credentials, in order to either drain him of his agenda-setting powers or, preferably, getting rid
of them and him as well.
Tattered Credentials
It was not only the U.S. which has had its bona fides seriously compromised by the extorted resignation of Aristide.
Reminiscent of Ethiopia’s Haile Selassi’smournful appearance before the League of Nations in Geneva in 1936, where he
pleaded for help to suppress Mussolini’s legions, only the English-speaking Caribbean, led by Jamaican Prime Minister
P.J. Patterson, displayed any spunk in challenging the inelegant U.S.-orchestrated game plan.
As the crisis began to mount last December and the political opposition became more assertive in the streets of
Port-Au-Prince, the U.S. strategy to resolve Haiti’s political crisis began to take form. It was based on preposterous
assumptions as well as cynical planning. A U.S.-sanctioned international peace force would be introduced into Haiti, but
only to uphold a prior political agreement to be fashioned between Aristide and the Port-Au-Prince-based political
opposition, led by the businessmen dominated “Group of 184.” The central credo of the latter body was that it would not,
under any circumstances, carry on a dialogue with Aristide. Since there were to be no negotiations, there could be no
agreement. But according to Powell’s pharisaical formula, there would be no peacekeeping initiative unless such
negotiations took place and a resolution achieved. Yet it was Aristide who conceded to every demand made on him by the
O.A.S., the E.U. (especially France), the U.N., the U.S., and the CARICOM nations. He was also repeatedly denounced by
Powell and the international community for his obstructionism, and rarely the opposition, which saw its vested interest
intrinsically better served by chaos than peace. This was a solid strategy on the opposition’s part, because it knew
that it lacked the popularity to win the elections which successful talks inevitably would help bring about.
All Dishonorable Men
Powell’s thesis that a political solution must precede the arrival of a peace force was indefensible on grounds of
elemental logic. One would think that such an envisaged peace force would be much more urgently needed while violence
was occurring, and Aristide was dangerously tottering, rather than after a peace agreement had been achieved.
Demonstratively, Brazil, Canada, Chile, France and for that matter, the U.N. and the O.A.S., signed on to Powell’s
diktat strategy of taking no action until it was too late to save Haiti’s now fatally blasted democratic germ plasm. In
the manner of a blow hard, Powell later blamed Aristide for dilly-dallying; however it was Powell who was fruitlessly
using up the Aristide government’s precious remaining moments with inaction, even though there was time enough for the
U.S. to demonstrate it meant to induce continued democratic rule. One would expect limp wrist behavior from an already
discredited Secretary-General Gaviriaof the O.A.S., or from President Lagos of Chile, whose unregenerate military under
Gen. Pinochet routinely tortured and murdered anyone with Aristide’s radical agenda. This assignment of his Hessians was
a small enough payment to be made by the former self-described socialist leader to show Chile’s gratitude to the White
House for entering into a bilateral Free Trade Agreement with it. Meanwhile, Brazil’s Lula de Silva meekly prepared his
troop contingents to be dispatched to the island, all after the fact, while Kirchner’s Argentina chose to sit out of the
controversy altogether, both of the latter not bothering to significantly comment on Powell’s preposterous formulations.
Canada Presents No Problems
Predictably, Canada’s new prime minister, intent on improving relations with Washington, accepted Powell’s snake oil
formula for all-but-guaranteeing Aristide’s eventual ouster. Such a policy ill-served his country’s constructive
reputation for fielding a somewhat less patronizing attitude to the rest of the region than its U.S. neighbor. Ottawa’s
supine accommodation to Powell’s illusory timetable for when to intervene was pathetic, particularly since the governing
Liberal Party was part of the problem for not having allowed its police trainers to remain in Haiti long enough back in
1994-96 to adequately carry out its failed commitment to professionalize the country’s security force.
The near silence of Mexico over Haiti on the eve of President Fox’s visit to the Bush family ranch was sadly
understandable, given the Mexican leader’s lonely, if desperate quest for immigration reform, but the silence by the
region’s other heavy hitters was totally incomprehensible. At the end of the day, standing almost alone, it was
Jamaica’s prime minister, P.J. Patterson, who upheld the region’s honor by implicitly rebuking the timidity of other
hemisphere leaders in their hiding behind Jesuisticreasoning to justify their decisions to be irrelevant and indifferent
to the fateful interruption of the democratic process in Haiti. Patterson took this stand in spite of the vulnerability
of Jamaica’s sagging economy and its need for Washington’s financial backing.
Aside from Powell, the world leader most deserving of derision is France’s Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin.
Seemingly, the French diplomat at first boldly confronted the rapidly deteriorating situation in Haiti by calling for
action on an urgent basis to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in the country, but he then contracted his profile on
the issue by completely embracing Powell’s thesis that a political solution must precede dispatching any peace forces.
With this acquiescence, Washington’s position of stalling on any action until the demise of Aristide’s rule was a done
deal, with the French official amiably falling on his sword after proving of less honorable stature than he would have
had the world and Washington believe.
Powell’s Tainted Role
U.S. Embassy authorities were able to thrust a resignation letter into Aristide’s hands for him to sign, under the
implicit threat that this was the only way for him and his family to be flown out of the country to safety. Once
airborne, Aristide was only told of his ultimate destination of the Central African Republic a half hour before his
scheduled landing, which flouted the utter contempt in which the Haitian leader was held by U.S. officials. Powell’s
defense of this scenario was based on his now thoroughly revised line that Aristide was a “flawed” president deserving
of his fate, as if the tattered remnants of the Secretary of State’s own reputation were something else.
The embassy’s arrangement of Aristide’s exodus, including its denial to him of communication access to the outside while
he was being flown to Africa, was particularly outrageous and already is drawing a wave of negative reactions from all
over the world. Powell’s conduct of U.S.-Haiti policy should be seen for what it was - a flagrantly callous treatment of
a man who was no less worthy than his Washington counterpart. In this context, Powell must accept that for the best of
reasons his protracted honeymoon with the public is now at an end, and his moral code is seen as being all but
indistinguishable from that of Noriega and Reich. In reality, Powell already had given himself away earlier when he
demanded that the Mexican and Chilean presidents sack their UN ambassadors for opposing the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Today Haiti is a horrific mess, but that shouldn’t be solely attributed to President Aristide’s “flawed performance,” as
the U.S. Secretary of State all too facilely maintains. If Aristide was flawed, it was largely due to the impossible
conditions laid down by Washington for him to rule. Powell bought his hardliners interpretation of events by caving in
to the Miami-bred zealotry of his Latin American policy makers, thus hopelessly exacerbating Haiti’s last three years of
strife and misery. By sanctioning the continued freeze of $500 million in multilateral assistance to Haiti on the
exaggerated pretext of irregularities in the presidential and senatorial elections in 2000, one has the perfect parallel
with his illusory statements to Congress and to the American public over Iraq. But just as Powell had insisted that
sound intelligence existed when he passionately validated the entirely erroneous belief that Iraq posed an urgent
threat, he again presented an entirely false picture of the causative agents of Haiti’s political and economic
difficulties to the American public and what this country has been doing to redress them.
A Bankrupt Policy
There is simply no disputing the fact that the extremism and mean spirited nature of Washington’s Haitian policy helped
to prevent democratic practices from taking root on the island. Secretary of State Powell must be condemned for
sponsoring a policy that was superficial, illogical, narrowly conceptualized and damaging both to the U.S. national
interest and Haiti’s most basic needs. Any hope that the kind of human misery propelling tens of thousands of Haitians
over the past decade to risk their lives trying to reach south Florida, can be assuaged by throwing the country open to
a political process which has no natural heroes nor any reason for its citizenry to trust their new U.S.-imposed
officials, deserves to be seen as only one more of Powell’s illusions.
The above memorandum, authored by Council on Hemispheric Affairs director Larry Birns, with the assistance of COHA
Research Associate Jill Shelly, is an adaptation of an article that will appear in the forthcoming issue of “In These
Times.”
der U.S. Rule
Issued 8 March, 2004
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