Reply #47: Here's a decent Haiti article for posters with some time to spare.

[Judi Lynn]

It points out the right-wing flavor of the _{George W. Bush} Haitian coup:

Who removed Aristide?
Paul Farmer reports from Haiti

~snip~
It would be convenient for the traditional Haitian elites and their allies abroad if Aristide, who has been forced to preside over unimaginable penury, had been abandoned by his own people. But Gallup polls in 2002, the results of which were never disseminated, showed that, despite his faults, he is far and away Haiti's most popular and trusted politician. So what is to be done about the people who, to the horror of the Republican right, keep voting for him?

The protégés of Jesse Helms have had more say in Aristide's fate than the Haitian electorate have. Although US officials stated initially that he had been 'taken to the country of his choice' at the end of February, Aristide's claim that he had no idea where he was going seems more plausible. He had never been to the Central African Republic before. About the size of Texas and with a population of only three million, it is subject to French military and economic interests. A BBC story in March 2003 reported that the capital, Bangui, was the world's most dangerous city, while the US advises its citizens not to travel to the country; the US embassy was closed two years ago.

On the tarmac, Aristide thanked the Africans for their hospitality, and then said: 'I declare in overthrowing me they have uprooted the trunk of the tree of peace, but it will grow back because the roots are l'Ouverturian.'

The Bush administration appears to have put two men in charge of Latin American diplomacy, and they've been at it for a long time. As the 'special presidential envoy to the western hemisphere', Otto Reich is the top US diplomat in the region, even though he has never survived a House or Senate hearing; he was given the post by Bush during a Congressional recess. In the 1990s, Reich was a lobbyist for industry (one beneficiary of his work: Lockheed Martin, who have been selling fighter planes to Chile); before that he had a long record of government service.

During the civil war in Nicaragua, according to William Finnegan in a New Yorker profile, Reich

headed a Contra-support programme that operated out of an outfit called the Office of Public Diplomacy. The office arranged speeches and recommended books to school libraries, but also leaked false stories to the press - that, for instance, the Sandinista government was receiving Soviet MiG fighters, or was involved in drug trafficking . . . The office employed army psychological-warfare specialists, and worked closely with Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver North, at the National Security Council.

During the course of the Iran-Contra investigation, the US comptroller general concluded that Reich's office had 'engaged in prohibited, covert propaganda activities'. But by then Reich had been named US ambassador to Venezuela, where he laid the groundwork for future efforts to destabilise President Chávez. Not all this activity is covert: less than a year ago, Reich was on record welcoming a coup against Chávez, and urging the State Department and opinion makers to support the 'new government'. The only problem was that the Venezuelan majority failed to fall into step, and Chávez remained.

Last month, the Bush administration sent Roger Noriega to Haiti to 'work out' the crisis. Not everyone knew who he was: Noriega's career has been spent in the shadows of Congressional committees. For the better part of a decade, he worked for Helms and his allies, and it's no secret he has had Aristide in his sights for years. US Haiti policy is determined by a small number of people who were prominent in either Reagan's or George H.W. Bush's cabinets. Most are back in government today after an eight-year vacation in conservative think tanks or lobbying firms. Elliot Abrams, convicted of withholding information from Congress during the Iran-Contra hearings, serves on the National Security Council; Reagan's national security adviser John Poindexter until recently headed the Pentagon's new counterterrorism unit; John Negroponte, former ambassador to Honduras, is now ambassador to the UN. Jeanne Kirkpatrick is on the board of the International Republican Institute, a body which has been actively supporting the opposition in Haiti (my sources suggest that it backed the demobilised army personnel who provided the opposition's muscle at the beginning of the year, though it denies this).
(snip/...)

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n08/farm01_.html