Sorry, I hadn’t been paying attention to Haiti until last week. Everything I’ve been reading has been focusing on what’s happening now, but I still kinda need some background info.
I did a search for similar Threads but they all seem to be in Great Debates, and indeed they seem to follow the “Debate” format. Right now I’m looking for basic facts to help me understand the situation, no debates.
It is currently being suggested by many that the U.S. was behind the opposition and forced Aristide’s resignation. We may not be able to factually answer this one just yet.
What I would like to know is how may Aristide’s interests been in conflict with the interests of the current U.S. Administration?
Regardless of whether or not the U.S. did remove Aristide, did the U.S. have motive?
I freely admit that I don’t know much about this, either, so all I’ll say is that Haiti has been beseiged by poverty and corruption for decades, nay centuries. Aristide was doing little, if nothing, to reverse that trend. I doubt if anyone sincerely believes that the next guy will be willing or able to do that, eiter, but there you have it.
To answer the question you asked (from an admitted non-Haiti expert):
Father Aristide’s interest seemed to be mainly Aristide, and has been already noted, doing nothing (in his third time at bat) to help the situation–not that anyone else might have done any better. I don’t know that might have been in conflict with our interests, though, unless Haiti has some strategic significance that most of us aren’t aware of. As a side note, our “Haiti Policy” of the early '90s was driven by the Congressional Black Caucus, and they are still his most vocal supporters. Never did see just quite what they saw in him, though.
Let’s keep in mind that this is the second time Aristide was run out of power by armed thugs.
The first time the Clinton administration restored him to power.
This time, I don’t think the Bush administration was interested in doing him any favors.
I don’t think it’s a matter of Aristide’s interests being in conflict with Washington’s, more a matter of Washington not wanting a failed government/civil war in Carribean and viewing the removal of Aristide as the easiest/most direct way to get things to settle down.
Also keep in mind that the “forced from power” statement is just one side of the story. He was NOT carted off at gun point, you know? Washington’s side of the story is that offered him safe passage out of Haiti to an African country willing to accept him, and he took the offer. Did any arm-twisting occur? It’s one party’s word against another’s.
Keep in mind that Aristide might also be trying to salvalge some sort of pride or have some other motive to claim he was “forced” from power Maybe he’s fuming because last time we sent the Marines in to put him back on the throne and this time we didn’t.
Don’t forget that Aristide was (a) democratically elected and (b) leaned to the left of the political spectrum; those two are sufficient reasons for the US government to have him overthrown. Other past examples include Laos (1957), the Dominican Republic (1963), Bolivia (1971), Chile (1973), Australia (1975), and Honduras (1983).
From the earlier link:
“Australia — The CIA helps topple the democratically elected, left-leaning government of Prime Minister Edward Whitlam. The CIA does this by giving an ultimatum to its Governor-General, John Kerr. Kerr, a longtime CIA collaborator, exercises his constitutional right to dissolve the Whitlam government. The Governor-General is a largely ceremonial position appointed by the Queen; the Prime Minister is democratically elected. The use of this archaic and never-used law stuns the nation.”
From Foreign Policy:
"Intelligent American observers’ initial disbelief needs reassessing. For in Australia a plausible case is being developed that CIA officials may have also done in Australia what they managed to achieve in Iran, Guatemala, and Chile: destroy an elected government – in the case of Australia, the Labor party government from 1972 to 1975.
“The fall of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and the appointment of current Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser met with profound relief among U.S. officials. Whitlam, perhaps the best orator in contemporary Australian history, aroused deep hostility within the U.S. intelligence community. It viewed his party and politics as, at best, benighted accomplices to Soviet undertakings. The CIA feared that secrets shared with Australia were being routinely compromised, that CIA activities and agents in Australia would soon be revealed, and that the U.S. government’s critical and irreplaceable electronic intelligence bases in Australia, vital for U.S. nuclear verification activities, could be lost.”