Not Fate, But Politics

US military obsession with "security" in Haiti and propaganda in the US media about the country's past are raising doubts about the intentions behind the international community's relief efforts in response to the recent tragedy. Once again, a false picture is being reported by so-called journalists to the public about the growing potential for violence in Haiti, and how it will become unstoppable unless there is an increased level of US military presence in the country. But if history is any judge, the US government never deploy its troops to a country for reasons of maintaining law and order or handing out relief packages. Rather, the imperial exploitation and criminal domination of countries by the global elite best explains the speedy actions of the US government and the United Nations in Haiti.

If Haiti was Rwanda the only spotlight on the tragedy would've come a decade from now in a film starring Danny Glover called Hotel Haiti. And my guess is that he would win a sympathy Oscar for directing and acting. But because of Haiti's blood-stained history with the West, its proximity to the United Sates, and its most recent uprisings against the neoliberal/corporate enslavement, the country was treated to the "generosity" and "friendship" of the international community in the wake of its tragic disaster. In other words, the criminal elite is telling the people of Haiti through the US government and the United Nations "get out of the way, or face our guns." And unsurprisingly, the people in America and Canada are looking on clueless, congratulating their governments for reaching the scene so quickly. What they don't realize is that it is a scene of a crime. In "Haiti's tragedy: A crime of US Imperialism," Bill Van Auken writes:

The estimated 200,000 who have died, the quarter million or more injured and the three million whose homes have been destroyed are victims not merely of a natural catastrophe. The lack of infrastructure, the poor quality of construction in Port-au-Prince and the impotence of the Haitian government to organize any response are determining factors in this tragedy.

These social conditions are the product of a protracted relationship between Haiti and the United States, which, ever since US Marines occupied the island nation for nearly 20 years beginning in 1915, has treated the country as a de-facto colonial protectorate.

Forget charity. Charity is easy. What the people of Haiti need from the American government is an apology. For years they have been denied justice and freedom at the hands of the criminal financial elite and the US-UN jackals dressed as peacekeepers. Charity is, of course, important and the heartfelt outpouring of support by the American people and the world's citizens for Haiti will not be forgotten, but there are limits to charity. Charity cannot rebuild a nation. Charity cannot sustain a people after the news reporters turn their lens to another catastrophe. But worst of all is government foreign aid disguised as charity. The history of American foreign aid is a history of imperialist and financial thieves preying on human suffering to achieve criminal ends.

Charitable acts allow people to feel involved without asking the hard questions about why such a tragedy had to be so devastating. The uncomfortable truth is that it didn't. Poor government policies endorsed by the United States and the financial elite created the conditions that made the situation a lot worse than it needed to be. Just as in New Orleans, the lack of strong infrastructure to sustain a natural catastrophe greatly contributed to the high amount of deaths and destruction.

In "Haiti Needs Freedom," Sheldon Richman gives a real solution to the devastating cycle of tyranny that Haiti has undergone throughout its existence as an independent nation:

For Haiti the problem is that centuries of foreign and domestic tyranny have kept individual liberty and free markets from blossoming. The U.S. government played a role in this, with its nearly 20-year occupation (1915–1934) in behalf of sugar interests. But Haiti has suffered under a series of domestic tyrants too, including the brutal Duvaliers, who were backed for a while by the U.S. government as a Caribbean cold-war counterweight to Castro’s Cuba. Even under democracy, Haiti found little relief from corruption and stifling control. It has been the recipient of government-to-government “aid,” but that has not created prosperity; rather it lined the pockets of crooked officials.

Politicians call on people to give money because they're too corrupt to demand justice. While the people, after an onslaught of media coverage, comply without demanding any real commitment from their politicians towards Haiti's interests. And the exploitation is all the more sickening because it has been done all before, and not very long ago, in New Orleans.

In the article, "It's the New Haiti!", Michael Collins compares the aftermath of Haiti's devastation to New Orleans and how it will most likely be transformed for the interests of a criminal corporate class who always seem to be waiting in the wings when disaster strikes like a band of vultures. Collins writes:

The most important similarities between New Orleans and Haiti are ethnicity and class based. In New Orleans, the majority of damage occurred in black, largely poor districts of the city. In Haiti, the entire nation is both black and, for the most part, living in poverty.

But Haiti’s divergence from the New Orleans story line is significant. It represents an entire nation, a huge, strategically placed land mass just waiting for the type of rehabilitation that New Orleans only dreamed about. And to the rescuers must have big plans.

And the rescuers also have big news cameras that show the picture but don't tell a story. Too many people think "100, 000 deaths" is a news story. It is not. It is a headline meant to attract viewers. A story needs historical background, not a blank screen; witnesses before the disaster, not just victims of the disaster; objective historians, not paid analysts; field reporters who dig through the rubble of information, not journalists carrying babies around; and most of all a story needs actors. Was Haiti's destiny solely controlled by its people before the earthquake or were there other participants who desired to influence the country? The US mainstream media has not told a story about the Haitian tragedy, instead, they have shown the reality of the earthquake's victims through officialdom's lens, and in some cases even made up reality to push an agenda. Rebecca Solnit says that the media becomes over zealous when covering natural disasters and portray a picture that contributes to panic and fear-mongering, practices that eventually lead to the needless loss of lives through the course of the disaster. In her article, "When the Media Is the Disaster," she highlights the phenomenon of looting and how it is carelessly over-exaggerated by the media in times of crises:

Soon after almost every disaster the crimes begin: ruthless, selfish, indifferent to human suffering, and generating far more suffering. The perpetrators go unpunished and live to commit further crimes against humanity. They care less for human life than for property. They act without regard for consequences.

I’m talking, of course, about those members of the mass media whose misrepresentation of what goes on in disaster often abets and justifies a second wave of disaster. I’m talking about the treatment of sufferers as criminals, both on the ground and in the news, and the endorsement of a shift of resources from rescue to property patrol. They still have blood on their hands from Hurricane Katrina, and they are staining themselves anew in Haiti.

Within days of the Haitian earthquake, for example, the Los Angeles Times ran a series of photographs with captions that kept deploying the word “looting.” One was of a man lying face down on the ground with this caption: “A Haitian police officer ties up a suspected looter who was carrying a bag of evaporated milk.” The man’s sweaty face looks up at the camera, beseeching, anguished.

Another photo was labeled: “Looting continued in Haiti on the third day after the earthquake, although there were more police in downtown Port-au-Prince.” It showed a somber crowd wandering amid shattered piles of concrete in a landscape where, visibly, there could be little worth taking anyway.

A third image was captioned: “A looter makes off with rolls of fabric from an earthquake-wrecked store.” Yet another: “The body of a police officer lies in a Port-au-Prince street. He was accidentally shot by fellow police who mistook him for a looter.”

People were then still trapped alive in the rubble. A translator for Australian TV dug out a toddler who’d survived 68 hours without food or water, orphaned but claimed by an uncle who had lost his pregnant wife. Others were hideously wounded and awaiting medical attention that wasn’t arriving. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, needed, and still need, water, food, shelter, and first aid. The media in disaster bifurcates. Some step out of their usual “objective” roles to respond with kindness and practical aid. Others bring out the arsenal of clichés and pernicious myths and begin to assault the survivors all over again.

The “looter” in the first photo might well have been taking that milk to starving children and babies, but for the news media that wasn’t the most urgent problem. The “looter” stooped under the weight of two big bolts of fabric might well have been bringing it to now homeless people trying to shelter from a fierce tropical sun under improvised tents.

The pictures do convey desperation, but they don’t convey crime. Except perhaps for that shooting of a fellow police officer -- his colleagues were so focused on property that they were reckless when it came to human life, and a man died for no good reason in a landscape already saturated with death.

The most outrageous idea about Haiti's misfortunes that has gained ground even in circles beyond Pat Robertson is that Haiti is responsible for its recurrent state of poverty and desolation. Without Western aid, these commentators tell us, Haiti would still be a nation of savages. If this idea continues to go unchallenged by President Obama and other leaders of the West then it will legitimize two centuries of oppression and Western injustice. If the country is left to men like Clinton and Bush, then Haiti could very well face a new phase of slavery under the cover of "economic development."

Even today, after two and half centuries of revolutions, some people still uncritically accept the lie that fate rules nations, and that the natural progression of humanity is the current course of technocratic development that is taking place all around the world, which leaves out human freedom and most of all, independent political action. But it is not fate that Haiti is under siege. It is not fate that men and women today have to walk through naked body scanners at airports. It is the policy of a few criminal men. It is politics. As Theodor Adorno said; "The concept of fate, which subjects men to blind domination, reflects the domination exercised by men," (Prisms, 70). The world is not ruled by fate but by sheer political will. And the people of the world possess a greater power to exercise their will than a criminal elite. So we must turn to politics, not charity, if we truly want the people of Haiti to live under better, and freer conditions.