US Military Obstructs Aid to Haiti

[Kléber]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jan2010/hait-j18.shtml


US General Ken Keen, who commands the military task force in Haiti, said US troops would “be here as long as needed.” He confirmed there were roughly 4,200 US troops in Haiti, largely in cutters patrolling offshore, and that by today there would be 12,000 US troops in the country. On Saturday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Port-au-Prince at the invitation of Haitian President René Préval. She argued for the imposition of an emergency decree in Haiti, allowing for the imposition of curfews and martial-law conditions by US forces. Clinton explained: “The decree would give the government an enormous amount of authority, which in practice they would delegate to us.”
US officials are citing contradictory reports of looting in Haiti to justify further US troop deployments. Keen told ABC, “having a safe and secure environment is going to be very important. ... We have had incidents of violence that impede our ability to support the government of Haiti and answer the challenges that this country faces as they’re suffering a tragedy of epic proportions.
...

The US military has taken control of Port-au-Prince airport as a key hub of its military buildup, blocking access by humanitarian flights. Humanitarian flights from France, Brazil, and Italy were refused permission to land, and the Red Cross reported one of its planes was diverted to Santo Domingo, the capital of the neighboring Dominican Republic.
France’s ambassador to Haiti, Didier le Bret, said France’s foreign minister Bernard Kouchner had lodged a protest with the US State Department after the US blocked a French flight carrying an emergency field hospital. He added that Port-au-Prince airport was “not an airport for the international community. It’s an annex of Washington. ... We were told it was an extreme emergency, there was need for a field hospital. We might be able to make a difference and save lives.”
...

At Port-au-Prince’s Municipal Nursing Home, barely one mile from the US-controlled airport, 85 elderly Haitians are starving and being attacked by rats. One man, Joseph Julien, has already died. Officials have cited fights over food at a nearby soccer stadium to justify not sending them supplies, despite their proximity to the airport. Nursing home administrator Jean Emmanuel told the Associated Press: “I’m pleading for everyone to understand that there’s a truce right now, the streets are free, so you can come through to help us.”
...

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said: “There may be an impulse to leave the island to come here. You will not qualify for TPS [Temporary Protected] status.” This would allow the US to deport them upon arrival. Officials in Miami, a city with a large Haitian immigrant population, are watching for signs of a mass flght from Haiti to the US.
...

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that it would move 400 detainees from the Krome detention facility to an undisclosed location, to free up space in case any Haitians manage to reach US shores.

[jake williams]

What? I thought the US was there because they're benevolent and want to help, just like always...

[Lyev]

Why are they actually doing this? Is there a valuable resource/resources on Haiti that they want their dirty hands on? The weak justification is that people are rioting and looting and whatnot and they see it as their "responsibility" to intervene, right? I hate that kind of western attitude.

[Rusty Shackleford]

The US is probably positioning itself to be the sole savior of Haiti and makes it its "own" problem. Big Poli-points domestically and abroad if Obama fixes things faster than bush with the whole Katrina Deal.

[jake williams]

Why are they actually doing this? Is there a valuable resource/resources on Haiti that they want their dirty hands on?
Imperials powers (the US, France and Canada) have been intervening over and over and over again in Haiti since independence. This was relatively easy to explain at the start - Haiti was one of the wealthiest colonies in the hemisphere, and its independence (in a lot of ways never really realized, but it was threatened) was a serious threat to then-ascendant colonialism.

The situation today is almost the opposite. It's the poorest country in the hemisphere and it's one of the least independent countries in the world. But I think the reasons the modern actions there are not so different: when it was rich and independent, the goal was to make it poor and subordinate; now that it is poor and subordinate, the goal is to keep it that way.

Haiti consistently over the years has had various popular movements threatening to bring it back to its independent roots, in different ways and manifestations for sure, but they almost all threaten imperialism.

Further, now we have to be careful how we talk about this, because there are countertendencies and complexities, but there are a lot of reasons poverty in one country is economically useful for capitalists in other countries. Basically it provides "somewhere to go". It provides somewhere to dump products unsaleable in wealthier countries. This actually happens pretty regularly in Haiti. It provides somewhere to threaten to move capital if labour costs in wealthier countries become higher than capitalists are willing to tolerate. The latter rarely actually happens, because capitalists to a large extent get what they want almost anywhere, but the threat in and of itself is useful.

I should add perhaps as an aside that the only reason I can speak at any length about imperialism in Haiti is that there are a few really really good activists in town who have done a lot of work on this, Yves Engler in particular. There are undoubtedly similar stories in other places, I just happen to be able to explain it to some extent with regards to Haiti. And Haiti is legitimately of special significance right now.


I should also add as an aside that the amount of resources the US is using in Haiti are pretty trivial compared to the resources it has available. So it's conceivable in upside down land, in a hypothetical world where imperialist and economic reasons aren't primary motiviating factors for activity, that even just for the political capital it could potentially garner there is an attempt to make it look like we're helping out. But I don't think that's at all the primary motivating factor for what's actually been going on. I think examples like that explained in the OP are strong evidence for that fact. But we shouldn't ignore that attempts to look good are insignificant phenomena in our society, in fact in aggregate all over the world they do have tangible and substantial effects.