Posted on 02/26/2004 12:05:32 AM PST by kattracks
WASHINGTON (AP) — The last time democracy fell apart in Haiti, black Democrats launched a very public campaign to get the Clinton administration to return Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power.As Aristide's rule again nears collapse, the same players are stepping up pressure again — only now it's on the Bush administration. And they are using different tactics. Rather than sending protesters into the streets, they're buttonholing top officials and showing up at President Bush's doorstep on short notice to urge that democratic rule be preserved in Haiti.
"This is an urgent moment calling for urgent action," Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said Wednesday after he notified Bush's top aides that members of the Congressional Black Caucus would pay an impromptu visit to the White House.
It is unclear whether the Democrats will succeed this time.
Bush said Wednesday that the United States was seeking a political solution to the crisis in Haiti, and his administration has made clear it has no desire to send in troops beyond the 50 Marines who arrived there Monday to protect the U.S. Embassy.
The president said he supports creation of an international security presence in Haiti to maintain order if a political settlement is reached.
The United States sent 20,000 troops to Haiti to restore Aristide to power in 1994, three years after Aristide — the country's first democratically elected president — was toppled by a coup. Since then, Aristide has been criticized by the United States for corruption, for rigged 2000 legislative elections and for violence against his political opponents.
On Wednesday, Bush made it clear that Haitians trying to flee to the United States by sea would be turned away.
American blacks contend that policy smacks of racism. They say the United States is unwilling to risk sending soldiers into the chaotic Caribbean nation, the Western Hemisphere's poorest, because its people are of African descent.
When Bush's words reached Jesse Jackson in Libya on Wednesday, he began dialing up members of Congress and administration officials to lash out.
"It is clear that the right wing in this country does not support that democracy," Jackson said in a telephone interview. "(Bush) is, in fact, supporting overthrow of this government in this hemisphere."
On Capitol Hill, 18 black caucus members, plus Rep. Jan Sikorsky, D-Ill., hopped on a bus and went to the White House. Their main demands to Secretary of State Colin Powell and Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, were that the United States call for a cease-fire in Haiti, create a humanitarian buffer zone in the capital, Port-au-Prince, and work to keep Haiti from slipping again into the clutches of a dictatorship.
The lawmakers argued that the United States was encouraging the insurgency by refusing to restore humanitarian aid, and they asked the administration to send in troops to protect Haitian officials.
"We cannot have (Aristide's) life taken away on our watch," Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said beforehand.
Rice emphasized the administration's hopes for a political framework that could lead to a peace accord. Powell said now was simply not the time for military intervention, even though "we're just as concerned about the loss of human life as you are."
The lawmakers asked for Bush, and Bush joined the meeting. They stressed the need for the humanitarian zone, and Bush said he would think about it.
"He made it very, very clear he shared our concerns. His question was whether he agreed with the solutions," Cummings said afterward.
Earlier this week, a klatch of Democratic senators also sat down with Roger Noriega, the assistant secretary of state who led a delegation to Haiti last weekend. One of them, Bill Nelson of Florida, whose state has a sizable Haitian-American population, said later that the administration's policy seemed designed to drive Aristide out of power.
Jackson said tried to reach Powell before going to Libya, arguing that the United States had a responsibility to stand by Aristide, like it or not.
When he couldn't reach Powell, Jackson said he instead got on the phone with Democratic front-runner John Kerry. Kerry spoke out Tuesday, telling The New York Times that the Bush administration encouraged revolt by cutting off humanitarian aid and adopting an aloof posture toward Aristide.
On Monday night, when Powell returned his call, Jackson urged Powell to engage in shuttle diplomacy between Aristide and opposition leaders, and asked that Bush send U.S. soldiers to protect the president's compound.
Late Wednesday, as the lawmakers' bus pulled away from the White House, the Coast Guard intercepted a boat carrying 22 Haitians off the coast of Miami.
"I can tell you from our visit if they didn't know, they really know now, the importance of an international intervention with the United States playing a leading role," said Rep. Kendrick Meek, D-Fla.
How does one go about ''preserving'' that which provably has never existed? Aristede, based upon only his own actions, is and always has been Stalin in miniature, Mugabe writ small.
Of course, this type of thug always has had support from an unfortunately large number of the lace-panty types that infest the Department of State.
Now, let me guess. This is the OFFICIAL black helicopter crowd, right?
Please pardon me if my surprise is staggeringly underwhelming, as regards this lot demonstrating their willful stupidity (yet once again) in public.
Is there ANY tyrant that large chunks of the Left will not invariably find some odd ''reason'' to support? Sheesh.
11 april 2003
Bill Clinton’s trip to Port-au-Prince on Tuesday was supposed to be all about his Clinton Foundation’s fight against AIDS. Haiti is indeed engaged in a brutal battle against the disease. Yet even so, locals didn’t seem too happy to have the former president calling on Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide. Thoughtful policy types, Haitian and otherwise, who are interested in righting the capsized nation largely ignored the visit.
In fact, what is fascinating about the Clinton voyage is the stark contrast between the glory Mr. Clinton insists on for his Haitian protégé and the disdain that so many Haitians -- once strong supporters of Mr. Aristide -- now have for their president.
This is especially evident among intellectuals and elites, who increasingly write and speak about Mr. Aristide as a man that cultivates a culture of fear and has destroyed a nascent democracy.
At least part of the resentment about the Clinton appearance in the Haitian capital centered on allegations of corruption. There are unflattering but unavoidable suspicions of the relationship between the Haitian president and Clinton Democrats who went into the long distance telephone business with him after his return to power in 1994.
Haiti’s Patriotic Movement for National Salvation (MPSN), which hopes that Mr. Aristide’s failed government will soon fold, issued a press release on April 8 impugning Mr. Clinton’s motives. "Did the former American leader invest in important economic sectors and does he feel the need to safeguard his interests in the post-Aristide era," the MPSN asked.
During his one-day visit Mr. Clinton declared, "I think there should be a humanitarian exception to the embargo on aid," according to the Associated Press. A call for funneling large sums of money into any place so notoriously corrupt should raise eyebrows. But this case creates an even greater miasma. Perhaps not coincidentally, Mr. Aristide’s wife Mildred, who calls the shots in Haiti’s shady telecom business, coordinates the national effort to combat AIDS.
Another point of contention for Haitians was Mr. Clinton’s use of the term "embargo" to describe the freeze on aid. It is rhetoric that Mr. Aristide is also fond of but it is inaccurate ; an embargo is a prohibition against commerce. Moreover, the freeze could be lifted today if Mr. Aristide would comply with some minimal levels of democratic civility. Unfortunately Mr. Clinton did not mention this.
For ardent defenders of Mr. Aristide such as the Congressional Black Caucus or for Caribbean ambassadors to the U.S. who dislike George W. Bush and have been known to actively support Mr. Clinton’s wife, the plea for more international aid for Haiti might have settled some debts. But for those serious about the Haitian struggle, what appears to be relentless Clinton advocacy for the Aristide presidency is disturbing.
The generalized disgust with the Mr. Aristide’s tactics is by no means limited to the sphere of his ideological enemies. Plenty of critics today were once supporters. In the New York Review of Books, Peter Dailey, who describes himself as a journalist who was sympathetic to Mr. Aristide in the early 1990s, has written a two-part review of "Haiti’s Predatory Republic : The Unending Transition to Democracy" by Robert Fatton, Jr.
Among other things, the Fatton book traces the historical roots of Haiti’s "predatory democracy," a place where, Mr. Dailey writes, "government remains the primary route to power and wealth." Thus it is not surprising that Mr. Aristide has become another in a long line of authoritarian Haitian leaders.
In Part I of his review, on March 13 Mr. Dailey explains what Bill Clinton seems to still not understand. "Aristide’s opponents turned out to be neither the entrenched economic elite nor the die-hard elements of the old Duvalieriste party, as almost everyone in 1994 might have anticipated, but the social democratic-constitutionalist wing of the Lavalas movement, the left-wing-populist coalition that first brought Aristide to power, which was mobilized into opposition by the Aristide government’s increasingly corrupt and authoritarian character."
As Mr. Aristide’ party broke apart in the mid-1990s a deep rift grew between himself and the idealists who helped him to power. Writes Mr. Dailey : "Aristide was now opposed by veterans of the anti-Duvalier struggle and almost all of the left, persons who had stood with him in the Eighties and fought for his return from exile. Among the disaffected former supporters are virtually all of Haiti’s leading intellectuals and artists, the persons who had best articulated the humane values that should be at the basis of any new Haitian society."
"By 1999, it seemed to many Haitians that Aristide, who once personified Haitian aspirations for democracy, now represented Haitian democracy’s biggest obstacle," Mr. Dailey says.
Nor are Aristide critics limited to Haiti. In Washington, as well, some members of congress are admitting the failure of Haitian democracy. On Feb. 5, during a Senate hearing on Haitian migrants, Senator Edward Kennedy had this to say about the situation : "When Haiti elected its first democratic president in 1990, we had a great hope for economic and political stability and respect for basic rights. But even Aristide has failed to bring in a new era of peace and prosperity.
"Instead, we have seen escalating political violence. Illegal arrests, arbitrary detentions, disappearances, killings, crackdowns on political opponents, and restraints on free speech and free assembly are all too common. In the last six months, we have seen new waves of violence, targeting journalists, students, human-rights actvists, and the government’s political opponents. Those who commit these harsh acts of brutality and intolerance often operate with impunity, and in some cases, they appear to be acting with government support."
By now even a zombie would recognize how thoroughly discredited Mr. Aristide is and how critical international pressure is to altering the situation. Which raises the question of why Mr. Clinton doggedly pursues his cozy relationship with the Haitian president.
MARY ANASTASIA O’GRADY
Haitian president and Clinton Democrats who went into the long distance telephone business with him after his return to power in 1994.
Good one. Unfortunately so true.
Bwah....
Why not?
My advice to the rebels would be to kill the communist ex-priest IMMEDIATLY - or he will be re-installed....
Kill him NOW....and all that stand with him....
There is nothing to fear from the U.N. -- it will be months or perhaps years before they work up the consensus or nerve to do anything...
My question to the black caucus is to ask where their first loyalty lies --- with America's best interests, or some communist black thug in Haiti...
The Congressional Black Caucus speaks up publicly to save this sorry bastard, but I haven't heard a word of condemnation about the black leaders in Africa murdering, stealing from and dispossessing white farmers....
WHY?
Semper Fi
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