QandO

March 02, 2004

We're already not missing you...
Posted by Jon Henke

Imagine Robert Mugabe in trouble, in danger of losing his life to an internal uprising. He appeals to the US for help and we tell him "you're on your own, guy". In desparation, he flees the country. Once he's out of the country, he claims the US "forced him out" by refusing to send the military to protect him.

Suppose there would be much of an outcry? Would people demand an investigation to find out whether we had refused to protect "democratically elected" Mugabe?

Uh-uh. "Screw him, and the fraudulent elections he rode in on" would be the word around DC.

However, that is exactly what happened with Aristide in Haiti, and there are demands for an investigation.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president, said he thought there ought to be some investigation of the claim that Aristide was forced out and escorted by U.S. troops.

"I don't know the truth of it. I really don't," Kerry said on "Today" on NBC. "But I think it needs to be explored and we need to know the truth of what happened."

At any rate, Aristide's claims just don't sound credible. They "don't pass the smell test", as Ezra puts it....

Once you make the logical leap that has us getting involved in this fashion, you have to wonder why our forces would go to the trouble of kidnapping Aristide and putting him in a room sans telephone but not restrain him from making international cell phone calls to prominent Black Americans.

My read, which is based on nothing but intuition, is quite different. The smartest political move for Aristide was to accept that the Rebels were going to win this battle. Remember, this is a man who has been deposed before and returned in 1994 to lead Haiti. So he leaves, but begins planting the story that the Americans forced him out. The clear implication then is that the Rebel uprising was simple American puppetry. He begins making himself a cause celebre on the Left and having his loyalists spread the tale that Americans took him away at gunpoint. If the Rebels fail to govern effectively, Aristide can come back under the rationale that the uprising was not about him, but American interests. That way, he doesn't have to deal with the critiques of his Administration, he simply has to vilify America.

And if the US did withdraw our military protection from Aristide? Good. Haiti may or may not have a shot at a stable democratic government, but it did them little good to have the farce that was the Aristide regime.

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