24423: Hermantin(News)U.S. has done enough in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Sun, Feb. 27, 2005



U.S. has done enough in Haiti




Re the Feb. 22 editorial Daring jailbreak exposes Haiti's plight: It is hard
to fathom that one can argue that the United States needs to do more for
Haiti. The U.S. government has been involved in the internal affairs of
Haiti ever since a contingent of Marines occupied the country for 19 years
almost a century ago, leaving Haiti indebted to U.S. banks and with a
violent U.S. trained military.

We now know that Emmanuel ''Toto'' Constant, head of the brutal paramilitary
FRAPH -- Armed Revolutionary Front of the Haitian People -- which terrorized
Haiti from 1991-1994, was an asset of the Central Intelligence Agency. He
fled to New York City in the mid-1990s. The U.S. government has refused to
extradite him to Haiti to stand trial for his crimes.

It is a matter of public record that successive U.S. administrations have
financed the development of an ''opposition'' to Jean-Bertrand Aristide --
an opposition that has never had the legitimacy or domestic base to win an
election. It has only glimpsed power following the two coup d'etats that
have ousted Aristide.

There is credible evidence that the United States provided military training
and equipment to the gang of former military and FRAPH personnel that
crossed the border from the Dominican Republic last January. The Bush
administration appointed the current prime minister, who has no domestic
base and is overseeing a government rife with corruption and extreme
violence.

The United States has done enough, thank you. If The Herald's concern is a
flood of refugees from Haiti, it should start reporting on the destabilizing
effects of U.S. policy, not asking for more of it.

TOM RICKER, co-director, Quixote Center/Haiti Reborn, Brentwood, Md.