27799: Kondrat: (letter to editor) NY Times, Tracy Kidder (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

  submitted by Peter Kondrat

  printed in The New York Times, February 13, 2006

    To the Editor:
                   "Haiti's Orphan Democracy," by Amy Wilentz (Op-Ed, Feb. 7),
is right on the money ? except for one sentence.
      Ms.  Wilentz writes that Haiti's last democratically elected president,
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was driven from office "with the support of the
right-wing elite and a nod from Washington." But Washington did more  than nod.

      Members of the Bush administration systematically  engineered the
blockage
of foreign aid to Haiti's elected government.  That and a variety of other
measures were clearly aimed at  destabilizing the Aristide administration.
       Washington might have  tried to help democracy take hold in Haiti. That
would have been the  right thing to do, and the hard thing to do. But
Washington chose to do  what was easy: to undermine a nascent democracy in a
desperately  impoverished country that lacked even the semblance of an
effective  police force.
      Tracy Kidder