The US State Department on Thursday ordered the departure of non-emergency personnel from Haiti as the security situation in the country deteriorates.
Expected responses:
- This is because the US (or the West) hasn’t done enough in Haiti.
- This is because the US (or the West) has done too much in Haiti.
We need the Goldilocks zone of doing just enough.
“If you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all”
-God
You don’t need god to tell you that. An IT guy would suffice.
I mean, yeah.
The west did too much evil and not enough good, that’s how that works sometimes.
I don’t think Haiti can be just blamed on the West. The stablest it’s been during its entire history was when it was a French colony with monstrous slavery practices and when it was under American occupation. For a decade or two, they got some decent leaders, but since then, it’s been several decades of robbers and despots, all pulled from the people of Haiti, none of whom were Western puppets.
Oh, sure, if the US and France had treated Haiti better, that would have helped. But the West didn’t cause the current problems of Haiti. They’re domestic.
No matter how much aid is pumped into Haiti, you can’t solve the problem of a country which has degenerated so far that it is essentially a nation of gangs and bandits.
I’ve asked Haitian emigres about it. They don’t have hope. What they’ve told me is that there isn’t any hope, that the country is doomed and hardly even a country any more.
I don’t know what the solution is, if there even is one.
This is beyond not true. If the colonizers hadn’t first killed off the native Taino, then forcibly kidnapped people from Africa, then made sure to destabilize their native culture groups, then made sure they could not access advanced education, then took those that found a way when people took their freedom from the colonizers, then made up an imaginary debt to cover the “cost” of the people they’d enslaved, then had the backing of the international community to force them to pay the imaginary debt all the way through 1947, then consistently interfered with and destabilized the political development of the country up to the modern day while also pushing for export-first agriculture and undermining local production with “aid” - then we could have a conversation about the foibles of Haitian leadership.
The Haitian people can and should challenge their leaders and strengthen their governance, but everyone else can either apologize and look for ways to be supportive or shut up.
You’re right that the country would almost certainly be better off if the French and Spanish hadn’t colonized it in the first place. That almost goes without saying.
The Haitian people can and should challenge their leaders and strengthen their governance, but everyone else can either apologize and look for ways to be supportive or shut up.
That’s the thing. Haiti doesn’t have political leaders or effective governance to challenge. And telling people who recognize that fact to shut up won’t change it.
Haiti has agency. Haitians have agency. They have been free of foreign control since the end of the US occupation, almost a century ago. They have been free of onerous forced foreign debt payments since 1947. Haiti is a country situated right by one of the largest import consumers in the world and has enjoyed favorable trade and investment terms and incentives with the US for decades.
But foreign investment doesn’t flow into the country. Why? Because it is a failed state with no effective leadership, corrupt beyond measure. The Duvaliers and the following dictators are the ones most responsible for making the country that way, and they weren’t Western puppets. They were domestic.
Nothing goes without saying these days, it is worth stating the case. And Haiti does have leaders, even if the political variety are not an option at the moment. It isn’t about recognition, it is about what you do with it - none of your commentary offers any thoughts or ideas that might improve things. You’re pointing at suffering and just going “it’s kind of their fault”.
Of course Haiti has agency, that is the point I made. They have **not ** been free of foreign control by any measure however, between direct interdiction by the US to heavy handed influence from the World Bank and others. The US kidnapped the sitting President in 1991 for goodness sakes! Your statement that it is a failed state is a facile observation - yes, but downplaying the role others have and laying it at the feet of the Haitian people is dishonest.
For the record I absolutely agree that “shut up” is generally a poor response to any criticism, but it is warranted in this case because you are restating the known from the outside without any engagement or solution-seeking. Just saying something sucks is not only not a helpful observation, it adds to the echo chamber of hopelessness that you yourself mentioned faces the people of Haiti. So if you aren’t going to give proper context, and you aren’t going to offer up support or ideas or insight or anything, then yes, silence is the best choice.
Dude, I can’t have absolute certainty over an alternate timeline. Maybe the Taino would have given birth to a genocidal dictator who would go on to eradicate the entire planet in a nuclear holocaust. Pretty unlikely, but who knows? All any honest person can say is that it seems very likely the country and island would have been better off without the crimes of Columbus etc.
And while Haiti has some people with the potential to become leaders, nobody has the effective ability to exert leadership over the country or a realistic pathway to gain that ability. Maybe that changes eventually. I don’t know.
This isn’t about an echo chamber of hopelessness. This is acceptance of reality. I have talked to emigres about the issues facing Haiti. You want to pretend there’s hope? Go ahead.
Also, I’m not sure why you are trying to pretend that the US “kidnapped” Aristede when what happened is that he fled to the US after the Haitian military ejected him from power in a coup. He was later restored to power by US intervention, in 1994, after the military ran the country halfway into the ground.
The Department of State warned in a statement of a high threat of violent crime and kidnapping throughout the city. It added that the US government’s capacity to provide emergency services to US citizens in Haiti is severely constrained.
This conflict hasn’t gotten much attention in the press - thanks to OP for bringing it forward. Here’s an Al Jazeera article from May that explains the conflict in more detail than the summations available from the western press.
This wouldn’t have happened if Wyclef Jean had been elected.
