Handicapping the Gap: Haiti
Tuesday, March 16, 2004 at 7:16PM Our decision to go back in was no big surprise. As soon as desperate people there started signaling a willingness to hop on boats and make for U.S. shores, you just knew the White House would have to bite the bullet and deal with the situation. When I saw that the Coast Guard had turned back two boats with 140 on board, I could almost hear the Marines cowboying up for their next great Caribbean adventure. Aristide's later whining about being tricked out of the country was fairly silly. He knew his time was up. And anyone on our side bitching about how we removed him from power should simply be happy we managed to do so without having to shoot anything - or anyone - up.
My definition of a truly "failed state" is one that "fails" to get any great power interested in its sad plight, so by that idiosyncratic measure, Haiti isn't really a failed state, but our interest is driven more by geographic proximity than by real desire to do better there. If Haiti was located off the coast of Africa, then fuhgetaboutit!
This Bush Administration intervention is unlikely to do any more good than the Clinton one that preceded it. The U.S. is simply not serious about making any long term commitment to the Caribbean's Gap states, except to cherry-pick members for the proposed Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA. In theory, I approve of such cherry-picking, as I say in the book, but eventually we need to get around to the Haitis too.
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