Posted on: Thursday, March 11, 2004
EDITORIAL
It's time to pay attention to Haiti
As in the case of most overthrows, it was corruption, abject poverty and desperation in Haiti that set the stage for the bloody rebellion that led to the Feb. 29 ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
And it will take sustained attention and aid to stop the beleaguered Caribbean nation from spiralling further into chaos and sending boatloads of refugees to America's shores.
An interim president, Supreme Court Chief Justice Boniface Alexandre, has been sworn in and Gerard Latortue has been picked as Haiti's new prime minister. Meanwhile, Gen. James T. Hill, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, says U.S. forces will intervene to stop Haitian-against-Haitian violence.
Hopefully, they will succeed in disarming Aristide loyalists and followers of rebel leader Guy Philippes. U.N. peacekeepers cannot do this alone.
Of course, any occupation of Haiti, as Iraq has taught us, must include an exit plan. That said, while Haiti lacks the ethnic and religious complications of Iraq, it has a long history of despotic rule.
With the help of the international community, Haiti now has an opportunity to break that cycle.
Decades of neglect have turned Haiti into a kind of hell that certainly precedes the 1990 election of Aristide, a once-popular slum priest who swept into office on a platform to champion the poor.
In 1804, Haiti was proudly declared the world's first independent black republic. But it was plagued by coups and bouts of dictatorship, including the 29-year reign of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his son Jean-Claude, who terrorized the country with their ruthless Tontons Macoutes militia.
Aristide replaced "Baby Doc," but was ousted by the military soon after. He was reinstated three years later via a U.S.-led invasion, and has had a rocky tenure at best.
The danger, of course, is that Aristide's eventual replacement becomes as ineffective and corrupt as his predecessors. If ever there was a nation that needed to be rebuilt from the ground up, Haiti is it.
It is right that the United States has a role in that effort. But it should be a role that is strictly defined: How long do we intend to be there, what shall we look for as a measure of success, and what is our strategy for getting out?
