HOW DOES IT HELP ISRAEL?:

Aristide's Final Hours: As Aristide left, the US marines moved in … and revealed the true power behind the Haitian ‘revolt’. (David Pratt, 3/07/04, Sunday Herald)

It is not only by bombing and invasion that the neoconservative side of the Bush administration is able to get rid of governments it doesn’t like. Economic sanctions, political coercion and outright subversion can also be the order of the day.

“At least twice I was present when the president [Aristide] hung up the phone on some US official, making demands during these last days,” said one of Aristide’s personal Haitian security guards, who asked to remain anonymous .

As Aristide himself stepped from his plane into exile in Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic, he made a remark that cannot fail to have resonance with many ordinary Haitians.

“In overthrowing me, they cut down the tree of peace, but it will grow again, because its roots are well planted,” he said, alluding to a famous statement by the fabled leader of Haiti’s revolution, former slave and stable boy Toussaint L’Ouverture, who was entrapped by the French, bound, and hustled away from Haiti on a ship never to see his country again.

“They have felled only the trunk of the tree. Branches will sprout again, for its roots are numerous and deep,” Toussaint had similarly once said.

But the fact is that the roots of peace have been well and truly ripped up in the latest crisis in Haiti. In comparing himself with Toussaint, Aristide was making a connection between the French betrayal of the great revolutionary and the Americans’ betrayal of his own presidency.

The US, after all, has form in the Caribbean and Latin America, and just as the neocons around President Bush have long viewed Aristide as another potential Castro they were probably equally adamant in their appreciation of rebel leader Philippe, who lists as his heroes the former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet and ex-US president Ronald Reagan. But for many ordinary Haitians, Philippe’s arrival is perceived as little more than the return of military rule.

“When Philippe was police chief, he bumped off loads of gang members. Who do you think is responsible for many of the fresh bodies lying on our streets since he came to Port-au-Prince?” said one former policeman, who like many Haitians prefers anonymity when expressing such views.

“I used to play ping pong with Philippe. Did you know he was a champion? He was as ruthless in that game as he is in dealing with his political enemies.”

Certainly, as paramilitary leaders go, Philippe has all the formal credentials. Having been trained by US Special Forces in Ecuador in the early 1990s, Philippe would no doubt have sanctioned and understood the role of the mysterious non-Haitians bristling with state-of-the-art weaponry who mingled with his ramshackle rebel group. Mercenaries? US Special Forces? Or that strange hybrid of both, that enables official US government spokesmen to deny the existence of such operatives should they ever overstep the mark?

The Bush administration, of course, has gone to great lengths to avoid direct complicity in a coup, with defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of state Colin Powell and White House press secretary Scott McClellan all calling that claim “absurd” and “nonsense”.

Most coups – as the French word suggests - means a sudden cut or blow. The coup against Aristide, and by extension against the Haitian people, was by contrast prolonged and cynically finessed. However, for Aristide to say he was abducted as he alleged is probably disingenuous.

One man who knows what happened is Jim Refinger. A former Jacksonville police sniper and retired marine, Refinger was part of the San Francisco-based private security team, the Steele Foundation, hired to protect Aristide.

“Everything was done with the full knowledge and co-operation of the president. There was no forcing the president to go anywhere. We protected our principal without a shot fired and he is safe.”

Mr. Pratt has his terms badly confused here. Neocons, or so the story-line goes, only really care about Israel and they're starry-eyed dreamers who think democracy can be installed everywhere immediately. It's neo-realists who support the Franco/Pinochet/Putin model and who note that a period of authoritarion rule by a conservative military figure seems to be a uniquely helpful step towards liberal democracy. Then, of course, you've got paleocons who would oppose Aristide if he were becoming a Castro--they being anti-communist enough still for it to overcome their isolationism (and the fact that it doesn't help Israel doesn't hurt); petrocons who only show any interest if oil is involved; and State department-types, who favor any government that happens to be in power.

Only the type of government that we install in Haiti will determine who's running this show. If Mr. Philippe could be installed, after being coated with some light patina of legitimacy, that looks like the best option.

On the other hand, Mr. Pratt gets it right when he says Aristide is full of bunk as regards how he left the island.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 7, 2004 12:54 PM