but the haitians did bring their misery down upon them. They voted in a lackadaisical liberal dictator who kept them in the poor house and didn't teach them how to do anything but rely on the leftist government.
Bush and the French conspired to force Aristide out, obviously you would have preferred Papa Doc and Baby Doc to still be in power. Baby Doc sold tortured prisoners blood to the US in the 80s, no doubt you feel he was just showing his caring side.
Bush always planned to oust Aristide
March 05, 2004
By Jeffrey D. Sachs
If the circumstances were not so calamitous the American- orchestrated removal of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from Haiti would be farcical.
According to Aristide American officials in Port-au-Prince told him that rebels were on the way to the presidential residence and that he and his family were unlikely to survive unless they immediately boarded an American- chartered plane standing by to take them to exile. The United States made it clear he said that it would provide no protection for him despite how easily this could have been arranged.
Indeed according to Aristide's lawyer the United States blocked reinforcement of Aristide's own security detail. At the airport Aristide said U.S. officials refused him entry to the airplane until he handed over a signed letter of resignation.
After being hustled aboard Aristide was denied access to a phone for nearly 24 hours and he knew nothing of his destination until he and his family were summarily deposited in the Central African Republic. He has since been kept hidden from view. Aristide used a cell phone to notify the world that he was forcibly removed from Haiti at risk of death and described his resignation as staged by American forces.
The U.S. government dismisses Aristide's charges as ridiculous. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has offered an official version of the events a blanket denial based on the government's word alone. In essence Washington is telling us not to look back only forward. The U.S. government's stonewalling brings to mind Groucho Marx's old line "Who are you going to believe me or your own eyes?"
There are several tragedies in this surreal episode. The first is the apparent incapacity of the U.S. government to speak honestly about toppling governments. Instead it brushes aside crucial questions: Did the United States summarily deny military protection to Aristide and if so why? Did the United States supply weapons to the rebels who showed up in Haiti last month with sophisticated equipment that last year reportedly had been taken by the U. S. military to the Dominican Republic? Why did the United States abandon the call of European and Caribbean leaders for a political compromise that Aristide had already accepted? Most important did the United States bankroll a coup in Haiti which seems likely based on evidence?
Only one ignorant of history would dismiss these questions. The United States has repeatedly sponsored coups and uprisings in Haiti and other Caribbean countries.
Ominously before this week the most recent such episode in Haiti came in 1991 during the first Bush administration when thugs on the CIA payroll were among the leaders of paramilitary groups that toppled Aristide after his 1990 election.
Some of the players this time are familiar from the first Bush administration including Powell and Vice President Dick Cheney. Also key is U. S. Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega -- a notorious Aristide-hater -- thought to be central to Aristide's departure. He will find it harder to engineer the departure of gun-toting rebels who entered Port-au-Prince this week.
Rarely has an episode so brilliantly exposed Santayana's famous aphorism that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
In 1991 when Congressional Black Caucus members demanded an investigation into the U.S. role in Aristide's overthrow the first Bush administration laughed them off just as this administration is doing in facing new queries from Congressional Black Caucus members. Aristide is being smeared with ludicrous propaganda and most cynically of all is being accused of dereliction in the failure to lift his country out of poverty. In fact this U.S. administration froze all multilateral development assistance to Haiti from the day George W. Bush assumed office squeezing Haiti's economy dry and causing untold suffering for its citizens. U.S. officials surely knew that the aid embargo would mean a balance-of-payments crisis a rise in inflation and a collapse of living standards all of which fed the rebellion.
Another tragedy in this episode is the silence of the media when it comes to asking questions. Just as in the war on Iraq's phony WMD major news organizations have refused to go to the mat over the administration's accounts on Haiti. The media haven't had the gumption to find Aristide and in failing to do so to point out that he is being held away from such contact.
With a violence-prone U.S. government operating with impunity in many parts of the world only the public's perseverance in getting at the truth can save us and others from our own worst behavior.
Jeffrey D. Sachs director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University is a former economic adviser to governments in Latin America and around the world. This op-ed is reprinted from the Los Angeles Times.
