In the wake of the destructive earthquake that destroyed the Hatian capital of Port-au-Prince, the American military has been instrumental in organizing the response to the resulting humanitarian crisis. The American military is doing the kinds of things militaries are very good at doing: Cargo flights into the major airport have increased from 60 to 100 per day, while approximately 2,200 Marines and some of the 82nd Airborne are helping to provide security around hospitals. But a representative of Haiti’s old colonial master is not happy:
The United Nations must investigate the dominant US role in Haiti, a French minister said, claiming that international aid efforts were about helping Haiti, not “occupying” it.
US forces turned back a French aid plane carrying a field hospital from the damaged, congested airport in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince last week, prompting a complaint from French co-operation minister Alain Joyandet. The plane landed safely the following day.
French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner warned governments and aid groups not to squabble as they try to get their aid into Haiti.
“People always want it to be their plane that lands,” Mr Kouchner said. “(But) what’s important is the fate of the Haitians.”
But Mr Joyandet, in Brussels for an EU meeting on Haiti, persisted: “This is about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti.”
But this sort of ignorant, hackneyed anti-Americanism isn’t the rule, but rather the exception. French President Nicolas Sarkozy spoke up, defending the “essential role” of the American military. The United Nations is defending American forces, saying through a spokesperson that “without them, the airport wouldn’t work.” It is a common argument to attack the United States for unilateralism, for “going it alone” in its foreign affairs. I think we are attacked for this precisely because we are one of the few countries that can.
Relax, world. There’s no oil in Haiti. Carry on.
I agree with Lonnie; your response, will, is just as ignorant, hackneyed, and knee-jerk as your accusation. check out democracynow.org for more eye-witness accounts of the building American occupation. I’m willing to bet you a few stiff drinks that “the continued US occupation of Haiti” will be heated topic in a year from now.
Quite an inappropriate time to be quibbling about the geopolitical western self aggrandizing aspirations of the usual suspects which have spread so much misery (especially in Haiti) already. The people down there are experiencing hell on earth. They need the basics to keep them alive not snotty douchery.
Precisely, nah. Partly because we can, sure, but mostly because we actually do.
Who the hell wants to occupy Haiti? That place is a shit hole.
It’s not like the US forces have mobile airports, mobile ports, mobile water filtration units, mobile power plants or anything else that could easily be used in Haiti if we weren’t fighting two unnecessary wars.
Oh, wait …
@7 Right you’re, but this is not the time for politicking from any side.
if the usa actually annexes haiti, every teenager in america will be practicing voodoo by 2020.
Maybe we’ll be greeted as liberators.
I think there should have been a greater response from the US military. If we could have flown batallion after batallion of helicopters (think Apocalypse Now without guns) into Port-au-Prince in the hours immediately following the quake, and dropped off medics and other personnel & supplies, I believe we could have saved a lot more lives and relieved a lot more suffering than we already have. A hundred flights a day, huh? We could have had 500 choppers in there in a matter of hours.
And all it would have taken was an order from Obama, the commander-in-chief. But then, so far in his presidency, he hasn’t demonstrated any willingness to take decisive action on anything, so why would he start now?
How is it that since we are nearby, sent communications ships loaded with helicopters and set up mobile command for the airport, because it needed to be done, because there was no one else in control, and because we got there and could, that we are now occupiers.
The French can suck it. They can give Haiti a few billion dollars of aid a year and then they can complain about logistics.
Haiti has been a client state of the USA for a long time. We don’t need to occupy them.
I think our humanitarian efforts are slowed down by an over-emphasis on security. Basically, letting a caravan or two get looted isn’t as big a disaster as not getting as much food and water out as fast as possible. Our media is playing up riots and looting, which is dumb. The fucking country just got leveled, of course there’s disorder. This doesn’t mean we should slow down our relief efforts, quite the opposite.
We’ve become a nation of cowards.
@11, Our Navy did send a helicopter carrier from Guantamano.
To be clear, I agree with everyone calling for us to be unafraid to go nuclear using the military for relief. My point is that we mustn’t pretend to be shocked that anyone might express suspicion, considering our tendency to go all Baby Huey now and again. Our actions right now will help dispel their fears next time.
@11: It’s about 1100 km from Miami to Port-au-Prince. A loaded Chinook transport helicopter has a range of 370 km. How exactly was that going to work?
Also, since the entire U.S. military operates about 750 cargo helicopters in total, it seems rather unlikely that two-thirds of them would just happen to be waiting in Florida.
Well, they suck shit at actually winning wars, so why not have them occupy Haiti?
@8 – yes it is.
We can’t afford to fight two wars without a 70 percent income tax on the rich.
@17- They’re great at winning wars, they suck at occupations.
@3
Were you being ironic, or are you just perfectly stupid? Why on earth would the United States occupy — let alone annex — a country full of poor French-speaking black people, that has been systematically stripped of its natural resources for the better part of 500 years? I mean, if you were to make a list of four things that the people in the Pentagon hate above everything else in the world it would look something like this:
1) Poor people
2) Brown people
3) French people
4) places with no natural resources to exploit
So why in God’s name would we want a country that has all four of those things in one place? Is there an unobtanium mine down there I just haven’t heard about or what?
And note that I’m not saying the United States is above invading and occupying a country if we want to. I’m not arguing that the United States is a moral nation. But the idea that the United States has any reason, Machiavellian or otherwise, to want Haiti is so shockingly ill-reasoned that it beggars the imagination.
Yes, the US is going to occupy Haiti with 2,200 troops. B/c that is exactly what we did 15 years ago WHEN WE HAD 20,000 troops there (Operation Uphold Democracy).
Oh wait, nevermind, no we didn’t. All we did was see that the democratically elected government was allowed to return and oversaw the disarming of the military junta that had kicked him out.
@16, USCGC Forward (WMEC-911) is a helicopter carrying ship that was first on the scene because it came from Guantamano. The aircraft carrier Carl Vinson showed up with a full complement of helicopters as well as picking up specialty S&R copters from other bases on the way there.
@19, and we’re getting better with occupation.
@20, the only interest the US has in Haiti is keeping it stable. Stable b/c it’s the right thing to do, stable b/c there are alot of Haitian voters in key states, stable b/c we don’t want floods of refugees AGAIN… you pick .
Personally I say a mix of all three.
@ 19,
Um, no. US military + wars= 100% failure since WWII.
I don’t understand this story. We’ve been occupying Haiti, in one way or another, since 1915. Why would we stop now?
#20 -Hi Judah, though you answer your own question (we occupy because we’ll can), I thought I’d elaborate a little with what Raj Patel said last night at Town Hall: we instigated a coup (several coups, actually, over the years) to topple democratically-elected governments because those governments didn’t do exactly what we wanted them to. Specifically, Artistide wanted to tell the IMF to fuck off, not abide to their structural adjustments, and be self-sufficient in rice production. We didn’t like that, so we got rid of him.
Sure, it’s a stretch for me -non-expert on Haiti that I am- but that’s what Raj said. Read his book.
More plausible is that we’re still pissed at Fidel for not abiding by our rules, but he’s thwarted our every attempt to dispose of him, so we have to brutalize his neighbors. That’s an easy one to believe.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
it makes angry to read this bullshit in the stranger. why occuppy haiti?¿?? who knows but obviously that is what the US army is doing there………. its clear to ALL. and btw, yeah, the country is useless and full of black people (and poor people most of them) but remmeber cuba? yeah……. that’s it. you need a new guantanamo bay.
@27
There’s a world of difference between overthrowing a country’s government and occupying that country. Governments were overthrown constantly during the Cold War. Between the United States and the Soviet Union there was hardly a third world country on the planet that was allowed to elect their own leader for the better part of 40 years. But we invaded — let alone occupied — only a fraction of the countries we destroyed.
@25… wait, so the Huks took over the Philippines, Kim Jung Il controls the entire Korean peninsula, Austin is still president of Grenada, Noriega is still in control of Panama, Saddam Hussein not only still rules Iraq, but also Kuwait, Bosniaks and Kosovars are still be slaughtered by the droves, and the Mullah Omar still has a theocracy running Afghanistan.
Interesting reality you’ve built there guy.
@27, you have your facts mixed up.
Aristide did become Haiti’s first democratically elected president in decades when he won election in 1991. However shortly after taking power he was deposed by the military. After the UN failed to get the military to step down and let Aristide return, the US threatened, then planned an invasion to reinstate Aristide (Operation Restore Democracy). We actually had birds in the air before they realized we were serious and agreed to Aristides return. The US then sent 20,000 of the initial 22,200 International Peacekeepers to secure his return (Operation Uphold Democracy).
It was only after the fraudulent elections of 04 that the US gave it’s wink and a nod to allow him to be deposed. Here’s what those neo-con hacks at the UN have to say about the ‘elections’:
“In the 2000 presidential and parliamentary elections, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his Fanmi Lavalas party claimed victory with a turnout that hardly rose above 10 per cent of the voters. The opposition, as well as members of the international community, contested the results and accused the Government of manipulating them.”
http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missio…
That should be fraudulent elections of 2000, not 04.