Delicious LiveJournal Links for 1-26-2010

[andrewducker]

• Securing Disaster in Haiti - how the US is fucking things up
  (tags: haiti occupation usa)

Comments

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

I can see that delivering relief supplies is very, very important, but I can also see that simply dumping huge amounts of supplies without organisation and control would simply lead to mass looting by those with the biggest sticks.

That article seems to suggest that all military influence in Haiti is for the good of the US or the Haitian elite, where it's obvious that a good deal of military control is genuinely required for the relief effort. Like all of these things the truth is probably somewhere in the middle and certain amounts of military control are necessary but it may well be that some amount of it is being directed for personal gain by some of those involve. How much of one and how much of the other is very, very hard to discern.

[missedith01.livejournal.com]

Why does it have to be military control?

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

Fair point, but who else do you think could keep adequate control?

First thing that springs into my mind is that you're going to need people with a high degree of organisation and weaponry. The military generally fits that bill (not always of course, but generally).

[missedith01.livejournal.com]

Well, for example, I think if the response was more adequate then a large degree of weaponry wouldn't be necessary ... people (I think) generally don't loot and don't riot unless there's a root cause.

Even if the military are the sensible choice, they're only as good as the organisation from the top. If there's no sensible plan and insufficient aid all the military discipline and guns in the world aren't going to stop the chaos.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

The authour of that article glosses over the allegations of abuses by Aristide and intimates that anti-Aristide feelings were the result of foreign manipulation. Aristide was vastly better than the Duvaliers, there's no doubting it, but Krushchev was better than Stalin too... merely being somewhat better-behaved and more popular than one's tyrannical predecessor doesn't make one a good leader.

Aristide led three political parties, and denounced all three when they showed anything but uncritical support for his policies. He lost two motions of non-confidence while sitting as President, both times leading to the coups that unseated him. He disbanded the Haitian Army and cracked down on the Tantons Macoutes (huge boosts to Haiti's civil society in their own rights) but his own partisans resorted to "necklassing" opposition figures and he had no qualms about shutting down opposition press if he didn't like what they said about him. The allegations of embezzlement from Teleco seem solid, more so than the allegations of collusion with the narcotics trade which appear to be somewhat shaky but shouldn't be discounted.

Mr. Halliward also completely dismisses the need for security, which is at least as much a mistake as landing nothing but troops. Haiti needs everything... but there's a limit on how much can be poured in and how fast it can be poured in. Priorities are going to conflict, and someone somewhere isn't going to like the resolution no matter what's decided. (From what I can gather, the much-grumbled-about wave-off of the MSF hospital arose because there was no way to transport it out of the airport available before the transport plane had to land in the Dominican and refuel. Even had it been landed immediately, it wouldn't have been set up that much earlier.)

I wouldn't discount Mr. Halliward's concerns; they're very much valid. I wouldn't, however, view his paper as a sound basis for making policy decisions.

-- Steve must, too, resist the impulse to oversimplify to make choices more straightforward... and often fails, alas.

[missedith01.livejournal.com]

Is it any shock that the nation that bought you Katrina can't hack it in Haiti? The only surprise is that anyone is surprised.