Oh great......
Someone in Haiti must have uttered the karmicly charged words, "Well it can get worse....."
And of course as any who has served in the military knows, it can ALWAYS get worse.
In Haiti to top off their debilitating poverty, their hurricanes, their earthquakes, their cholera, their everything else, they just got Baby Doc back.
Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier is the former "President for Life" aka dictator of Haiti. He inherited the position form his father "Papa Doc" Duvaleir when he was 19. The reign of the Duvaliers was so bizarre and twisted that Hollywood would have a hard time making a movie out of it. The father was a voodoo houdan and declared himself the incarnation of Baron Samedi. He kept the heads of past enemies in his house so he could commune with their spirits. He established militia/secret police called the Tonton Macoutes who roamed the countryside pillaging at will.
the younger Duvalier inherited all this power and for the most part ignored it and used the country as a giant piggybank to fund a massive playboy lifestyle. He left the actual running of the country to his mother and various of his fathers cohorts and lived large.
To our eternal shame, the US supported the Duvaliers because they were anti communist. We provided millions of dollars in aid to the country, the majority of which went directly into the Duvaliers personal accounts.
In 1985 riots began in the city of Gonaïves which spread across the country and in early 1986 Baby Doc fled the country.
Now he is back. They are saying on the radio that his return was a surprise. But he had hundred of "supporters" cheering him at the airport, a police escort, and rumors say that he was traveling on a Haitian diplomatic passport. So it wasn't a surprise to somebody.
God only knows where this is going to go, but it won't be a good place. Frankly, if he ends up in charge in Haiti again, I say we wash our hands of the place.
And of course as any who has served in the military knows, it can ALWAYS get worse.
In Haiti to top off their debilitating poverty, their hurricanes, their earthquakes, their cholera, their everything else, they just got Baby Doc back.
Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier is the former "President for Life" aka dictator of Haiti. He inherited the position form his father "Papa Doc" Duvaleir when he was 19. The reign of the Duvaliers was so bizarre and twisted that Hollywood would have a hard time making a movie out of it. The father was a voodoo houdan and declared himself the incarnation of Baron Samedi. He kept the heads of past enemies in his house so he could commune with their spirits. He established militia/secret police called the Tonton Macoutes who roamed the countryside pillaging at will.
the younger Duvalier inherited all this power and for the most part ignored it and used the country as a giant piggybank to fund a massive playboy lifestyle. He left the actual running of the country to his mother and various of his fathers cohorts and lived large.
To our eternal shame, the US supported the Duvaliers because they were anti communist. We provided millions of dollars in aid to the country, the majority of which went directly into the Duvaliers personal accounts.
In 1985 riots began in the city of Gonaïves which spread across the country and in early 1986 Baby Doc fled the country.
Now he is back. They are saying on the radio that his return was a surprise. But he had hundred of "supporters" cheering him at the airport, a police escort, and rumors say that he was traveling on a Haitian diplomatic passport. So it wasn't a surprise to somebody.
God only knows where this is going to go, but it won't be a good place. Frankly, if he ends up in charge in Haiti again, I say we wash our hands of the place.
posted by exMI | 06:09
3 Comments:
'Wash our hands of this place'
The U.S. military was is such a hairy hurry to retake Haiti after the earthquake that they wouldn't let a French portable hospital in until after they had established their beachhead. A year down the road nothing significant has been done - an absolutely monumental task, admittedly...complicated by the place's limestone base not being used to make concrete locally !
Drinking water was always at a premium. The locals even tracked cholera to a variant from Africa where UN troops were coming from.
Nobody in Haiti has wanted anything to do with the USA for a long time. If you wonder why, research the history of United Sugar...in Cuba too !
In a hurry? As I recall there was muttering in the press about how slow we were to take action. And that whole hospital thing is a wash. According to everything I have read there simply was no place to unload the blasted thing. Folks all over the world were rushing stuff to Haiti with no regard for the minor issue that the port was nearly destroyed and there was no way to get the stuff out of the airport. There was a massive backlog of materiel piled up and no transport. If it had landed it would have just become part of the road block. But of course this is the fault of the US. Everything always is.
If no one in Haiti wants anything to do with the US I wish they would stay there and quit illegally coming over here. And as I said, I am perfectly willing to leave the place to the tender mercies of whatever goon becomes the next president. Ever notice that no Haitian ex presidents are in Haiti? I wonder why?
On a better note, it seems the Haitians did arrest Baby Doc. (sort of)
If you have intel on how that hospital noise went down I'll use it. I don't need to make shit up.
Meanwhile I picked up stories that didn't make the U.S. press because I look for them simply to get contrasting views.
One was of a fellow delivering water purifying equipment who couldn't understand why U.S. choppers just did air patrol without shuttling relief supplies. Another was shooting of 'looters' when people were trying to survive after the quake.
Plausible deniability is not evidence of beneficial administration.'Mistakes were made' gets old when it's predictable.
Who removed Aristide?
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n08/paul-farmer/who-removed-aristide
http://www.aristide.org
Haiti 'gives ex-President Aristide new passport'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12388715
Mr Aristide's party, Fanmi Lavalas, was barred from standing in the current election, allegedly due to technical errors in its application forms
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