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<div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><font
size="1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.discourseblog.com/p/the-us-needs-to-get-the-hell-out?r=5xzkz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email">https://www.discourseblog.com/p/the-us-needs-to-get-the-hell-out?r=5xzkz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email</a></font></div>
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<div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><font
size="5"><b>The U.S. Needs to Get the Hell Out of
Haiti. <br>
</b></font><b>The White House is spearheading a
military intervention in Haiti. This is a horrible
idea.</b> <br>
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<div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">by Jack
Mirkinson, Discourse Blog, Oct 27</div>
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<div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><img
class="frontend-components-ImageViewerModal-module__img--WKP7Q"
src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:best,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc6d74f6d-32e4-4136-974c-721dba47aa53_6000x4000.jpeg"
width="533" height="353"><br>
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<div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Haiti is in
crisis. Fuel prices are out of control, ruthless gangs
have taken much of society hostage, and the ruling
administration is a corrupt, illegitimate farce.
Cholera is spreading throughout the country.<br>
<br>
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<div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s
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<div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Haitians have
taken to the streets in their thousands to protest
this horrifying state of <span><a tabindex="-1"></a></span>affairs.
But the international response is one you might be
familiar with: bring in the troops.<br>
<br>
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<div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s
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<div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">The U.S.,
Canada, and Mexico are leading a push at the United
Nations to send a multinational military force to
Haiti; on Wednesday, the Miami Herald reported that
the White House expects “the dimensions of a force to
be settled by early November.” It’s unclear whether
U.S. troops will be involved directly in this effort,
but Biden’s fingerprints will be all over whatever
army descends on Haiti.<br>
<br>
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<div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s
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<div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Some are
welcoming the prospect. The Washington Post editorial
board, which has been clamoring to put troops on the
ground, cheered last week, “At last, the U.S. edges
toward intervening in Haiti.”<br>
<br>
</div>
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<div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s
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<div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">There are two
things wrong with this sentiment. First, the idea that
the U.S. has not been intervening already in Haiti is
ridiculous. Secondly, it is precisely because of that
intervention that Haiti finds itself in such turmoil
and misery right now. Haitians desperately need less
outside involvement in their lives, not more.<br>
<br>
</div>
</div>
<div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s
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<div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">The history
of American-backed catastrophe in Haiti stretches back
centuries. Over the last 220 years, the U.S.: refused
to recognize Haiti’s independence from France in 1804
(slaves overthrowing their oppressors was not really
something Thomas Jefferson wanted to endorse); looked
the other way as France imposed crippling debts on its
former colony that Haiti has never recovered from;
stole resource-rich lands directly from Haiti; invaded
and brutally occupied Haiti for nearly 20 years;
supported a string of tyrannical rulers; created a
CIA-backed “intelligence unit” that served as a drug
trafficking terror squad; supported a coup that
overthrew Haiti’s first democratically-elected
president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide; fomented a second
coup against Aristide after he won another democratic
election; spearheaded a United Nations “peacekeeping”
force whose troops were responsible for mass sexual
abuse and a cholera epidemic; and meddled in every
single Haitian election of the past dozen years,
inevitably to prop up discredited crooks with no
legitimate claim to run the country.<br>
<br>
</div>
</div>
<div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s
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<div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">That brings
us roughly to now. In recent weeks, acting Prime
Minister Ariel Henry—who was blatantly installed by
the U.S. and its allies without any democratic backing
after the assassination of the late U.S.-backed
President Jovenel Moïse in 2021, and who is now ruling
indefinitely by decree—has issued a public call for
outside assistance as Haiti melts down. You might
think that Henry’s clear defiance of the will of the
people, or his calamitous decision to raise the price
of fuel, or the credible reports that tie him to his
predecessor’s killing, would render his request for
U.S.-led intervention, at the very least, suspect. But
it’s a good enough excuse for the corporate media and
the so-called “international community” to be able to
act like a legitimate Haitian government is sending a
distress signal. Massive protests in opposition to
Henry’s call have erupted, but what everyday Haitians
think is clearly not important enough for the U.S. to
care about. And so the boots are set, once again, to
touch down on Haitian soil.<br>
<br>
</div>
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<div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s
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<div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">The preceding
paragraphs hopefully made it clear why this is such a
bad idea. The U.S. has been intervening in Haiti since
time immemorial, and the results have been unceasingly
horrendous. Haitians have paid a huge price for the
constant American desire to control their country, and
there is nothing about this latest push that suggests
that further interference by the U.S. and its allies
will suddenly become a good thing for Haiti.<br>
<br>
</div>
</div>
<div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s
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<div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Even the
people backing a military intervention barely seem to
believe it will do any good. Here’s what the Post
editorial board had to say in a recent editorial:<br>
<br>
</div>
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<div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s
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<div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> "Largely
owing to Washington’s puppeteering, Haitian Prime
Minister Ariel Henry was sworn in in July 2021 after
the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. His
unelected, illegitimate government has been a
predictable disaster. It has either enabled or
promoted the country’s dissolution into criminal gang
fiefdoms allied with the country’s elite. It has made
no serious attempt to prepare the country for
elections, nor undertaken good-faith negotiations with
Haitian political parties and civil society. It has
demonstrated its impotence by ceding control of the
capital, Port-au-Prince, to mounting violence.<br>
<br>
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<div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s
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<div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> […] No one
should take lightly the prospect of an international
intervention in Haiti. Such efforts in recent decades,
by the Clinton administration and the United Nations,
have provided few long-term improvements. A U.N.
peacekeeping force that was deployed for 13 years,
until 2017, provided a modicum of stability but was
responsible for introducing what became one of the
world’s worst recent outbreaks of cholera. Some of its
troops sexually abused Haitian girls and women.<br>
<br>
</div>
</div>
<div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s
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<div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> That’s a
cautionary tale. Yet weighed against the cratering
prospects of a failed state whose main export is
asylum seekers, many Haitians would support — if with
misgivings — the chance at restoring some semblance of
normal life. For an intervention to succeed, however,
it’s not enough to suppress the chaos. New hope for
Haiti must involve a path toward democracy — and a
transition toward a legitimate government with popular
support."<br>
<br>
</div>
</div>
<div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s
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<div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">So, to
review: the person who was installed by the U.S. is
awful, previous interventions haven’t worked, even the
people who might want an intervention would only do so
with “misgivings,” and thus the obvious solution
is…intervene again. Sure, makes sense. (You’ve also
got to love the blatantly racist line “a failed state
whose main export is asylum seekers”—nicely done,
folks.)</div>
</div>
<div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s
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<div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Beyond the
Post’s inability to even buy its own nonsense, its
editorial also rests on a typical fallacy: that the
U.S. is concerned about the welfare of the Haitian
people. The U.S. has never been concerned about the
welfare of the Haitian people. It is concerned about
Haiti’s impact on the American global project. The
chief goal of American foreign policy is to ensure
that every inch of the territory it feels divinely
entitled to dominate stays within its orbit, no matter
the cost to the people who get in the way of that
mission.<br>
<br>
</div>
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<div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s
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<div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">The problem
the U.S. confronts in Haiti is not that the government
is helping impoverish its people, or that the leaders
the U.S. has imposed on the country are little more
than Mafia-controlled puppets, or that Haitians are
suffering the consequences of the sordid history I
covered a little while ago. It’s that things have
gotten too out of control. The violence is spiraling.
Henry is no longer able to maintain even the pretense
of stability. Ordinary Haitians are rising up too
much. It’s the kind of situation that could lead to
something resembling a democratic revolution—and that
is not a risk the U.S. is willing to take. Instead, it
wants to keep putting its thumb on the scale—and if it
has to use force to do that, then that’s what will
happen.<br>
<br>
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<div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s
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<div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Here’s a
simple suggestion: rather than adding another fiasco
to the pile, maybe the United States and all the other
countries supporting it should get the hell out of
Haiti, give back all the money they stole from Haiti
over the centuries, and finally, truly let the Haitian
people decide their future for themselves.</div>
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