[Peace-discuss] Chomsky commentary on Haiti (fwd)

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Ken-- Another candidate for a tri-fold... --CGE]
 
	US-Haiti 
 	By Noam Chomsky
 
Those who have any concern for Haiti will naturally want to understand how
its most recent tragedy has been unfolding. And for those who have had the
privilege of any contact with the people of this tortured land, it is not
just natural but inescapable. Nevertheless, we make a serious error if we
focus too narrowly on the events of the recent past, or even on Haiti
alone. The crucial issue for us is what we should be doing about what is
taking place. That would be true even if our options and our
responsibility were limited; far more so when they are immense and
decisive, as in the case of Haiti. And even more so because the course of
the terrible story was predictable years ago -- if we failed to act to
prevent it. And fail we did. The lessons are clear, and so important that
they would be the topic of daily front-page articles in a free press.
 
Reviewing what was taking place in Haiti shortly after Clinton "restored
democracy" in 1994, I was compelled to conclude, unhappily, in Z Magazine
that "It would not be very surprising, then, if the Haitian operations
become another catastrophe," and if so, "It is not a difficult chore to
trot out the familiar phrases that will explain the failure of our mission
of benevolence in this failed society." The reasons were evident to anyone
who chose to look. And the familiar phrases again resound, sadly and
predictably.
 
There is much solemn discussion today explaining, correctly, that
democracy means more than flipping a lever every few years. Functioning
democracy has preconditions. One is that the population should have some
way to learn what is happening in the world. The real world, not the
self-serving portrait offered by the "establishment press," which is
disfigured by its "subservience to state power" and "the usual hostility
to popular movements" - the accurate words of Paul Farmer, whose work on
Haiti is, in its own way, perhaps even as remarkable as what he has
accomplished within the country. Farmer was writing in 1993, reviewing
mainstream commentary and reporting on Haiti, a disgraceful record that
goes back to the days of Wilson's vicious and destructive invasion in
1915, and on to the present. The facts are extensively documented,
appalling, and shameful. And they are deemed irrelevant for the usual
reasons: they do not conform to the required self-image, and so are
efficiently dispatched deep into the memory hole, though they can be
unearthed by those who have some interest in the real world.
 
They will rarely be found, however, in the "establishment press." Keeping
to the more liberal and knowledgeable end of the spectrum, the standard
version is that in "failed states" like Haiti and Iraq the US must become
engaged in benevolent "nation-building" to "enhance democracy," a "noble
goal" but one that may be beyond our means because of the inadequacies of
the objects of our solicitude. In Haiti, despite Washington's dedicated
efforts from Wilson to FDR while the country was under Marine occupation,
"the new dawn of Haitian democracy never came." And "not all America's
good wishes, nor all its Marines, can achieve [democracy today] until the
Haitians do it themselves" (H.D.S. Greenway, Boston Globe). As New York
Times correspondent R.W. Apple recounted two centuries of history in 1994,
reflecting on the prospects for Clinton's endeavor to "restore democracy"
then underway, "Like the French in the 19th century, like the Marines who
occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934, the American forces who are trying to
impose a new order will confront a complex and violent society with no
history of democracy."
 
Apple does appear to go a bit beyond the norm in his reference to
Napoleon's savage assault on Haiti, leaving it in ruins, in order to
prevent the crime of liberation in the world's richest colony, the source
of much of France's wealth. But perhaps that undertaking too satisfies the
fundamental criterion of benevolence: it was supported by the United
States, which was naturally outraged and frightened by "the first nation
in the world to argue the case of universal freedom for all humankind,
revealing the limited definition of freedom adopted by the French and
American revolutions." So Haitian historian Patrick Bellegarde-Smith
writes, accurately describing the terror in the slave state next door,
which was not relieved even when Haiti's successful liberation struggle,
at enormous cost, opened the way to the expansion to the West by
compelling Napoleon to accept the Louisiana Purchase. The US continued to
do what it could to strangle Haiti, even supporting France's insistence
that Haiti pay a huge indemnity for the crime of liberating itself, a
burden it has never escaped - and France, of course, dismisses with
elegant disdain Haiti's request, recently under Aristide, that it at least
repay the indemnity, forgetting the responsibilities that a civilized
society would accept.
 
The basic contours of what led to the current tragedy are pretty clear.
Just beginning with the 1990 election of Aristide (far too narrow a time
frame), Washington was appalled by the election of a populist candidate
with a grass-roots constituency just as it had been appalled by the
prospect of the hemisphere's first free country on its doorstep two
centuries earlier. Washington's traditional allies in Haiti naturally
agreed. "The fear of democracy exists, by definitional necessity, in elite
groups who monopolize economic and political power," Bellegarde-Smith
observes in his perceptive history of Haiti; whether in Haiti or the US or
anywhere else.
 
The threat of democracy in Haiti in 1991 was even more ominous because of
the favorable reaction of the international financial institutions (World
Bank, IADB) to Aristide's programs, which awakened traditional concerns
over the "virus" effect of successful independent development. These are
familiar themes in international affairs: American independence aroused
similar concerns among European leaders. The dangers are commonly
perceived to be particularly grave in a country like Haiti, which had been
ravaged by France and then reduced to utter misery by a century of US
intervention. If even people in such dire circumstances can take their
fate into their own hands, who knows what might happen elsewhere as the
"contagion spreads."
 
The Bush I administration reacted to the disaster of democracy by shifting
aid from the democratically elected government to what are called
"democratic forces": the wealthy elites and the business sectors, who,
along with the murderers and torturers of the military and paramilitaries,
had been lauded by the current incumbents in Washington, in their
Reaganite phase, for their progress in "democratic development,"
justifying lavish new aid. The praise came in response to ratification by
the Haitian parliament of a law granting Washington's client killer and
torturer Baby Doc Duvalier the authority to suspend the rights of any
political party without reasons. The law passed by a majority of 99.98%.
It therefore marked a positive step towards democracy as compared with the
99% approval of a 1918 law granting US corporations the right to turn the
country into a US plantation, passed by 5% of the population after the
Haitian Parliament was disbanded at gunpoint by Wilson's Marines when it
refused to accept this "progressive measure," essential for "economic
development." Their reaction to Baby Doc's encouraging progress towards
democracy was characteristic - worldwide - on the part of the visionaries
who are now entrancing educated opinion with their dedication to bringing
democracy to a suffering world - although, to be sure, their actual
exploits are being tastefully rewritten to satisfy current needs.
 
Refugees fleeing to the US from the terror of the US-backed dictatorships
were forcefully returned, in gross violation of international humanitarian
law. The policy was reversed when a democratically elected government took
office. Though the flow of refugees reduced to a trickle, they were mostly
granted political asylum. Policy returned to normal when a military junta
overthrew the Aristide government after seven months, and state terrorist
atrocities rose to new heights. The perpetrators were the army - the
inheritors of the National Guard left by Wilson's invaders to control the
population - and its paramilitary forces. The most important of these,
FRAPH, was founded by CIA asset Emmanuel Constant, who now lives happily
in Queens, Clinton and Bush II having dismissed extradition requests -
because he would reveal US ties to the murderous junta, it is widely
assumed. Constant's contributions to state terror were, after all, meager;
merely prime responsibility for the murder of 4-5000 poor blacks.
 
Recall the core element of the Bush doctrine, which has "already become a
de facto rule of international relations," Harvard's Graham Allison writes
in Foreign Affairs: "those who harbor terrorists are as guilty as the
terrorists themselves," in the President's words, and must be treated
accordingly, by large-scale bombing and invasion.
 
When Aristide was overthrown by the 1991 military coup, the Organization
of American States declared an embargo. Bush I announced that the US would
violate it by exempting US firms. He was thus "fine tuning" the embargo
for the benefit of the suffering population, the New York Times reported.
Clinton authorized even more extreme violations of the embargo: US trade
with the junta and its wealthy supporters sharply increased. The crucial
element of the embargo was, of course, oil. While the CIA solemnly
testified to Congress that the junta "probably will be out of fuel and
power very shortly" and "Our intelligence efforts are focused on detecting
attempts to circumvent the embargo and monitoring its impact," Clinton
secretly authorized the Texaco Oil Company to ship oil to the junta
illegally, in violation of presidential directives. This remarkable
revelation was the lead story on the AP wires the day before Clinton sent
the Marines to "restore democracy," impossible to miss - I happened to be
monitoring AP wires that day and saw it repeated prominently over and over
- and obviously of enormous significance for anyone who wanted to
understand what was happening. It was suppressed with truly impressive
discipline, though reported in industry journals along with scant mention
buried in the business press.
 
Also efficiently suppressed were the crucial conditions that Clinton
imposed for Aristide's return: that he adopt the program of the defeated
US candidate in the 1990 elections, a former World Bank official who had
received 14% of the vote. We call this "restoring democracy," a prime
illustration of how US foreign policy has entered a "noble phase" with a
"saintly glow," the national press explained. The harsh neoliberal program
that Aristide was compelled to adopt was virtually guaranteed to demolish
the remaining shreds of economic sovereignty, extending Wilson's
progressive legislation and similar US-imposed measures since.
 
As democracy was thereby restored, the World Bank announced that "The
renovated state must focus on an economic strategy centered on the energy
and initiative of Civil Society, especially the private sector, both
national and foreign." That has the merit of honesty: Haitian Civil
Society includes the tiny rich elite and US corporations, but not the vast
majority of the population, the peasants and slum-dwellers who had
committed the grave sin of organizing to elect their own president. World
Bank officers explained that the neoliberal program would benefit the
"more open, enlightened, business class" and foreign investors, but
assured us that the program "is not going to hurt the poor to the extent
it has in other countries" subjected to structural adjustment, because the
Haitian poor already lacked minimal protection from proper economic
policy, such as subsidies for basic goods. Aristide's Minister in charge
of rural development and agrarian reform was not notified of the plans to
be imposed on this largely peasant society, to be returned by "America's
good wishes" to the track from which it veered briefly after the
regrettable democratic election in 1990.
 
Matters then proceeded in their predictable course. A 1995 USAID report
explained that the "export-driven trade and investment policy" that
Washington imposed will "relentlessly squeeze the domestic rice farmer,"
who will be forced to turn to agroexport, with incidental benefits to US
agribusiness and investors. Despite their extreme poverty, Haitian rice
farmers are quite efficient, but cannot possibly compete with US
agribusiness, even if it did not receive 40% of its profits from
government subsidies, sharply increased under the Reaganites who are again
in power, still producing enlightened rhetoric about the miracles of the
market. We now read that Haiti cannot feed itself, another sign of a
"failed state."
 
A few small industries were still able to function, for example, making
chicken parts. But US conglomerates have a large surplus of dark meat, and
therefore demanded the right to dump their excess products in Haiti. They
tried to do the same in Canada and Mexico too, but there illegal dumping
could be barred. Not in Haiti, compelled to submit to efficient market
principles by the US government and the corporations it serves.
 
One might note that the Pentagon's proconsul in Iraq, Paul Bremer, ordered
a very similar program to be instituted there, with the same beneficiaries
in mind. That's also called "enhancing democracy." In fact, the record,
highly revealing and important, goes back to the 18th century. Similar
programs had a large role in creating today's third world. Meanwhile the
powerful ignored the rules, except when they could benefit from them, and
were able to become rich developed societies; dramatically the US, which
led the way in modern protectionism and, particularly since World War II,
has relied crucially on the dynamic state sector for innovation and
development, socializing risk and cost.
 
The punishment of Haiti became much more severe under Bush II -- there are
differences within the narrow spectrum of cruelty and greed. Aid was cut
and international institutions were pressured to do likewise, under
pretexts too outlandish to merit discussion. They are extensively reviewed
in Paul Farmer's Uses of Haiti, and in some current press commentary,
notably by Jeffrey Sachs (Financial Times) and Tracy Kidder (New York
Times).
 
Putting details aside, what has happened since is eerily similar to the
overthrow of Haiti's first democratic government in 1991. The Aristide
government, once again, was undermined by US planners, who understood,
under Clinton, that the threat of democracy can be overcome if economic
sovereignty is eliminated, and presumably also understood that economic
development will also be a faint hope under such conditions, one of the
best-confirmed lessons of economic history. Bush II planners are even more
dedicated to undermining democracy and independence, and despised Aristide
and the popular organizations that swept him to power with perhaps even
more passion than their predecessors. The forces that reconquered the
country are mostly inheritors of the US-installed army and paramilitary
terrorists.
 
Those who are intent on diverting attention from the US role will object
that the situation is more complex -- as is always true -- and that
Aristide too was guilty of many crimes. Correct, but if he had been a
saint the situation would hardly have developed very differently, as was
evident in 1994, when the only real hope was that a democratic revolution
in the US would make it possible to shift policy in a more civilized
direction.
 
What is happening now is awful, maybe beyond repair. And there is plenty
of short-term responsibility on all sides. But the right way for the US
and France to proceed is very clear. They should begin with payment of
enormous reparations to Haiti (France is perhaps even more hypocritical
and disgraceful in this regard than the US). That, however, requires
construction of functioning democratic societies in which, at the very
least, people have a prayer of knowing what's going on. Commentary on
Haiti, Iraq, and other "failed societies" is quite right in stressing the
importance of overcoming the "democratic deficit" that substantially
reduces the significance of elections. It does not, however, draw the
obvious corollary: the lesson applies in spades to a country where
"politics is the shadow cast on society by big business," in the words of
America's leading social philosopher, John Dewey, describing his own
country in days when the blight had spread nowhere near as far as it has
today.
 
For those who are concerned with the substance of democracy and human
rights, the basic tasks at home are also clear enough. They have been
carried out before, with no slight success, and under incomparably harsher
conditions elsewhere, including the slums and hills of Haiti. We do not
have to submit, voluntary, to living in a failed state suffering from an
enormous democratic deficit.
 
***