GuidoWorld

Helping Haiti

The response to the tragedy in Haiti has truly been heartwarming. It is so nice to hear of people in the US and around the globe reach out their hands to those in need.When people respond the way they have, especially during these hard economic times, it truly makes me proud to be a member of the human race.

Yet, I would like everyone to take a moment to make sure that the government and all those working on our behalf in this crisis are doing so according to our good intentions. I think it is important to understand what our government is doing in our name and with our money.

I ask you all to take a minute to learn of the political and economic history of Haiti and our (the US) relationship to Haiti.

I recently read some excellent articles about Haiti at counterpunch.com. The writers at this site have some pretty impressive educational, governmental and journalistic resumes. I encourage you to look over their recent articles on Haiti.

I also invite you to Google Haitian history and the US to learn more of our role and function in Haitian life. A good starting point may be to Google Noam Chomsky as he has been one of the most thorough historians of the US’s role in Western Hemisphere politics.

Yet, for the moment let me just say a few things which may explain why I’d like you to do some research. Again what I know is minimal and that’s why you should do your own research.

Haiti has long been a poor nation dependent on fishing and farming to survive. It would make sense that its wealthy neighbor (the US) would lend a helping hand.

Yet, after over half a century of political interventions (interference and control?) and economic programs (exploitation?) the country is worse off than it ever was. Haiti is now the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

The farmers of the past have long ago lost their land and jobs to large foreign farming conglomerates which have grown exportable cash crops instead of basic food stuffs.  Neither the profits nor the foods have benefited the average Haitian resulting in the abject poverty and starvation of millions of people. This has resulted in out of work farmers flooding into the urban regions seeking work.

The response to this need has been to set up very low paying jobs in the clothing manufacturing trade often referred to as sweat shops. These jobs have not ended poverty but increased it as the workers still make less than $2 a day. It is hard to imagine $2 a day even covering food expenses for a person living on an island dependent on importing its basic food stuffs.

Politically our involvement in Haiti has even been more controversial and just as damaging.

I will use the following article I found on line this morning to help illustrate some of my concerns about how the US government is responding to the Haitian crisis.

About 5,000 U.S. military personnel were already assisting on the ground and from ships nearby, and four Navy ships and an additional 7,500 personnel were scheduled to arrive today, according to U.S. Southern Command.

The Navy hospital ship USS Comfort got underway this weekend; it is to arrive Wednesday. The ship, which received move orders Thursday, has 250 beds and a 550-person medical team. It was the ship’s fastest launch ever, said Steve Lucas, spokesman for Southern Command.

The military was worried that crime and looting would harm efforts.

“We are going to have to address the situation of security,” said Lt. Gen. Ken Keen, head of the U.S. task force in Haiti.

Haitian police struggled to scatter hundreds of stone-throwing looters in the city’s Vieux Marche, or Old Market. Elsewhere, amid the smoke from bonfires burning uncollected bodies, gunfire could be heard and bands of machete-wielding young men roamed the streets.

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Okay here go the red flags I see here. Last night I watched the Haitian piece on 60 Minutes. In this piece they mentioned that US military personnel plans on staying in Haiti for months.  Do we really need to have our military lead rescue and recovery efforts? After Katrina we had trouble even freeing a few national guardsmen to help with the devastation in New Orleans. Now, with even more troops being stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan were able to spare Marines and thousands of troops to lead and or monitor rebuilding efforts in Haiti, something just doesn’t add up.

Why not just beef up support for professional rescue operations such as the Red Cross rather than a military presence which did such a poor job in its humanitarian role in Iraq? Crisis assistance is a profession and dealing with people engulfed in so much medical, psychological and emotional trauma as the Haitians have, needs expert care not military intervention. If you think some military people are needed to help quell the looting and crime and emotional outbursts of people on the verge of death and starvation, well 12,000 land troops is definitely overkill.

If you look on YouTube you can find ample footage showing a number of local Haitian police patrolling the public toting machine guns over the last number of years. Poverty, starvation and police control aren’t new to these parts, the earthquake is the new element.

The USA today article is vague about how the current 5000 troops on the ground got there. In the quote “About 5,000 U.S. military personnel were already assisting on the ground and from ships nearby”, seems to imply our military presence was either already on land or in nearby ships before the earthquake. Doesn’t 5000 seem like an awful lot of troops just to have milling about Haiti? It seems to imply to me that we’ve been militarily interested in Haiti for quite awhile (again read the history).

Second, sending 7500 additional troops six or seven days after the quake seems like a missed opportunity from a crisis point. Having crisis response people arrive a week after the event seems odd in this day and age. That would be like sending snail mail correspondences instead of telephone and emails. In modern day transportation the military ship has got to be one of the slowest mediums available.

To justify the military role as being truly humanitarian and not a excuse for military aspirations the sentence regarding the hospital ship is more telling, “The Navy hospital ship USS Comfort got underway this weekend; it is to arrive Wednesday. The ship, which received move orders Thursday, has 250 beds and a 550-person medical team. It was the ship’s fastest launch ever, said Steve Lucas, spokesman for Southern Command.”

Considering the size of the tragedy 250 beds seems rather small, especially 250 beds which are arriving almost two weeks after the event. When every minute that passes could result in another preventable death, why would you send medical personnel by boat?

Think about it 12,500 military on hand while 550 medical personnel are still out at sea, as lives are hanging in the balance.  Wouldn’t it make more sense to fly in 12,500 medical personnel and boat in about 550 military personnel. In an emergency situation where time is of the essence who would dream of having designing a plan inn which your expert medical personnel arrives some 20,000 minutes after the beginning of the emergency. And this despite the fact that this was done, according to the article, in record time!

In the meantime we will have over 12,000 military personnel on the ground who instead of fighting which they are trained for, are providing medical and trauma care for one of the largest and severest tragedies of our life time.  The military might be minimizing but not denying its military purpose. The article says,”We are going to have to address the situation of security,” said Lt. Gen. Ken Keen, head of the U.S. task force in Haiti, and begins to lay the groundwork for later escalation of troop police action by the following.

“Haitian police struggled to scatter hundreds of stone-throwing looters in the city’s Vieux Marche, or Old Market. Elsewhere, amid the smoke from bonfires burning uncollected bodies, gunfire could be heard and bands of machete-wielding young men roamed the streets.”

Whether intentionally or not, this is a very artfully constructed sentence setting the stage for future escalation of police action. Hundreds of stone throwing people does not support the image of utter chaos deserving 12,500 US troops. Yet, the reference to distant gun fire does get our foot in the door. The fact is that most Haitians no matter how angry they are do not have the monetary resources for a lot of arms and firepower. The guns are either being fired by a few wealthier dissidents or by the police themselves to control rioting. Yet, in this abject poverty there isn’t a whole lot to steal. The term “bands” will probably soon became gangs and slowly morph into terrorists and resistance groups if we amp up our military role in once again “maintaining the peace” as we are doing in so many other nations around the globe.

The hate the Haitians mentality has long been part of our political ideology. The remarks by Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh are not isolated but in fact representative of much of US policy over the last half century of so. But,  don’t take my word for it, look it up.

Jim Guido