Bush brings civil war to Haiti

The Administration of U.S. President George W. Bush has more or less guaranteed that civil war will consume Haiti. He will be stuck with hundreds of Haitians making their way to Florida to escape the carnage as an election campaign is waged. He would have brought this on himself, he and his stupid advisers. The media have yet to catch onto this, and they probably will take Bush's side in this, but the facts speak for themselves.

These facts include the decision at the end of the Clinton Administration to put Haiti under a loans and assistance embargo to protest the complaints made by paid agents of the U.S. in Haiti. These agents call themselves the "opposition" and are mainly the same people who ruled Haiti with U.S. support in the past. The U.S. is funnelling millions of dollars to the "NGO" sector that does their bidding, meaning that the money is being funnelled to the very rich elite in a desperately poor country.

This embargo was imposed in the name of "democracy" as the U.S.-funded opposition complained about election results; namely that Haitian President Aristide's majority was slightly smaller than the official results. Thus, a complaint over a minor issue was made into excuse to embargo a desperately poor nation. This is a similar tactic to that employed in Serbia where a fight was picked under similar circumstances. This was also used recently in Georgia. The fights in these cases led to escalating demands and the overthrow of the elected governments. That tactic goes back even further, to 1990 Bulgaria where first the elected President Petar Mladenov, and later Prime Minister Andrei Lukanov, were forced to resign. In the Haitian case, the opposition wants President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to resign. American officials are voicing agreement to this, demanding "major changes" in Haiti as a result of this pressure.

Now that this opposition has sparked this violence, American officials are playing the same game that led to civil war in Kosovo in 1998. The trick includes separating the violent and "non-violent" opposition, even suggesting that the violent opposition is somehow tied to the authorities. Then, the "non-violent" opposition is described as completely clean and peaceful, unlike the violent government and thus it is declared to be morally superior to the government.

Thus, the State Department spokesman declared that "The political opposition has not been associated directly with these (rebel) gangs. The origin appears to be in other groups and sometimes groups that in the past were supported by people associated with the government".

He added that "The opposition has maintained a stance of peaceful demonstrations and pushing for peaceful democratic change" and have "worked with the CARICOM (some alliance of meddling Caribbean countries under U.S. domination) representatives to try to reach agreement." He added that it was "vital that the government take steps to end the climate of violence," that "there are certainly questions about whether the government has accepted the CARICOM proposals." Thus, the government is for violence and the opposition is for peace, he said.

The "non-violent" opposition's maximalist demands are embraced and when the government shows some flexibility, the goal posts are moved. The Americans call for major changes, just as it did in Kosovo when it demanded "a change in the way Yugoslavia is made up". In this Haitian case, the State Department declared that any compromise must "involve some rather thorough going reforms in the way that the government is run out there, the way that Haiti is governed."

Asked if Aristide should resign, the spokesman said "we recognize that reaching a political settlement will require some fairly thorough changes in the way Haiti is governed and how the security situation is maintained."

Meanwhile, the government is blamed for the overall situation including the opposition's violence, leading the violent opposition to conclude that aggressive attacks will lead to more punishment of the government by the so-called International Community. As the violent opposition makes gains, American officials tell the government that they need to surrender now to stop the bleeding. Should the government roll back the opposition gains, the Americans will accuse the government of repression and of causing a humanitarian catastrophe. This helps dissuade the government from defending itself and defending the constitution and thus increases the likelihood that the opposition gangs will take villages and towns and make any evicting of the rebels from such places to be a more bloody affair, which will be held against the government.

This is what happened in Kosovo in 1998, and like Kosovo, this is tied to the desire for some "regime change". In Aristide's case, this is not so much because he has not followed orders; he has since he was forced to agree to "reforms" as a price for his return in 1994, and these reforms have done spectacular damage to an already poor country. This has more to do with a vendetta by the Bush administration and its stupid advisorate, who consider the return of Aristide to have been a Clinton mistake that must be rolled back. These advisors argue further that despite the U.S success in taming Aristide and making him follow orders, he has the potential to revert to his radical self, if only to preserve his support in the slums. They do not want to take any more chances with him and would prefer a return to Duvalierism. This obsession will only give Bush more headaches come this presidential campaign, more headaches come November.